


Resist Me

by ArmsofWar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, AngeloftheLord!Cas, Angst, Bottom Dean, Bunker Fluff, Bunker Sex, Cowboy Hats, Cowboy!Castiel, Dean POV, Experienced Castiel, Fluff and Crack, Internalized racism, M/M, OOC, Oops, Sam doesn't get to have sex in this fic, Top Castiel, Western Fic, Wild West, a little bit, bisexual!cas, bisexual!dean, bottom!Dean, ghost cowboys, grand canyon - Freeform, kind of dub!con, my easterner is showing, sassy!Sam, some racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:08:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2735435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmsofWar/pseuds/ArmsofWar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What I mean, Dean Winchester,” Castiel’s eyes latched onto Dean’s, “is that we need to teach you how to resist temptation.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sabbit](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sabbit).



> So this is a Christmas gift for one of my best friends on the planet, who sent me this prompt the other day and I, being a friend and avoiding work, decided to explore the (awesome) prompt where Castiel teaches Dean how to resist temptation with the help of a sexy, wide-brimmed hat and dispassionate seduction.
> 
> I have no idea if this fulfills your desires, dear friend, but um...have some ghost cowboys?
> 
> This is a story in 3 parts plus an epilogue. The M rating will not come into play until the epilogue.
> 
> To Disclaim off the bat, I do not own these characters (except the ghost cowboys, I own those, unfortunately?). My familiarity with the Grand Canyon and Williams, Arizona come from a vacation I took there for my sixteenth birthday so their descriptions are entirely inaccurate and drizzled with youth. 
> 
> Many thanks, as always, to my dear Deeleybopper, to whom I owe so many things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey fronds. I don't know if this updates you all when I edit things. I have been hankering to retouch this story with a red pen (and some more jokes because I'm a child). If you have suggestions or complaints, let me know!

* * *

 

 _Think I'm going for a walk now._  
I feel a little unsteady.   
I don't want nobody to follow me  
'cept maybe you.  
  I could make you happy, you know, if you weren't already.  
I could do a lot of things and I do.

_Tell you the truth I prefer the worst of you._

 

-Ani DiFranco "Untouchable Face"

\- - -

 The Winchesters hadn’t seen Castiel in weeks, and Dean did not care at all.

You could say that he cared, but if you did you would be wrong. Because he didn't. Nope, he did not care one lick. He was really busy with, you know, stuff.

You get the point.

Back in the bunker, Dean finally had a room all his own and it was set up just the way he wanted it: memory foam mattress with two, count 'em _dos,_ down feather pillows; a poster of Kate Upton hanging over his newly refinished dresser— goddamn _mahogany,_ thank you very much; and a massive stereo accompanied by a 32” plasma big screen.

Plus, he got to hang out with Sam a whole bunch which was really awesome. And it wasn't always the killing monsters and dealing with douchey, Marlon Brando demon wannabes kind of hanging out either. Sometimes, it was actual relaxation and epic mano a mano down time.

There was nothing like hanging out with Sammy and kicking his ass in Mario Kart—oh yeah, he got a Nintendo Wii, too, for all the parties he was gonna have in his sweet digs. Well, maybe. Not likely. A dude can dream right?

Right now? Well, right now he was organizing the shit out of the Men of Letters archives because it was a total crapshoot. Like, really? Alphabetical order? Because when Dean was looking for "something that has massive fangs that shoots venom out of its eyeballs," seeing a file full of "things starting with S" was goddamn useless. 

Yeah, so, whatever Cas was doing Dean was totally not even thinking about it.

Seriously, Dean was glad that he hadn’t seen Castiel doing whatever the hell he was doing. Probably some angel shit, since that’s all he seemed to care about anymore. Every time Dean talked to the guy it was “blah blah Heaven,” this and “I need to get my grace blah blah.” Yeah, Dean was glad.

Those blue eyes and the tousled hair that the angelic faced douchebag insisted on fluttering around Dean? Yeah, they were totally a distraction anyway. Dean needed to do important things. Like sort archives.

The door to the library slammed open, which was a feat because those things were made out of concrete.  Dean glanced up at his brother who, for some reason, looked like he might actually murder him.

“Dean, I swear if you don’t leave my files alone I may actually murder you.”

 Dean rolled his eyes. “Sammy, come on, this is such a better filing system!”

“Is it? Is it, Dean?” Sam asked, a little bit bitchily to be honest. He couldn't help it, Dean thought sagely, just as Dean couldn't help being awesome. Sam pursed his lips. “Okay, then find me the file on the Vashta Nerada.”

Dean blinked. “Uh.” he glanced around his working area, files towering over his head in vast, wobbly skyscrapers. “The who?”

“Okay, how about Ekwensu?” See, Sam thought he looked really cool and smart when he crossed his arms across his chest and his hair swayed like there was a perpetual breeze, but he really just looked like a massive douche.

“An Ekwewhat?”

“How about something simpler than that!” Sam said, storming over to Dean’s piles. He picked up a file folder before tossing it away with disgust. “What about werewolves, Dean? Got anything on them?”

Dean glanced around, thinking he might have seen werewolves somewhere but...damn, did he put it in the “Things with Fangs” tower or the “Things that don’t like Silver” one?

Crap.

“Dean.”

The tower closest to his right knee was looking a bit like the leaning one in Pisa. Dean idly nudged the yellowed edges to line up which caused the pile to loose all of its structural integrity and flood to the floor with a _whoosh_. Et tu, Brute?

He pressed his lips together, refusing to look at Sam who probably had those damn puppy dog eyes or at the stupid piles around him and Dean just didn’t want to _deal_ with this. “No, Sammy. You’re wrong.”

“I didn’t even say anything yet!”

“I know what you’re going to say and I am _fine_!” Dean stood up and tried to storm out, but Sam grabbed his arm and drew him to a halt.

“Dean, Cas is going to call us. You know he is," Sam squeezed his arm, briefly, “He’s fine.”

Dean growled, shaking his brother off. “I know.”

Of course Castiel was fine. Castiel was always fine. Except when he tried to become a god or that one time he completely forgot who Dean was or that other time that he lost his grace and locked all the angels out of Heaven.

Except all of that.

Sam, held out a file of his own. It wasn't from the many littering the floor, and Dean looked at it then at his brother curiously.

“Jody called,” Sam said, watching as Dean reluctantly opened the folder and started paging through it. “Said that there was something going on out in Arizona. She can’t go but she thought it might be a good case for us.”

Dean scanned through the printed out news articles. “Storms, dying cattle, sulfur?” He looked up. “Textbook demon.”

“And that’s not all.” Sam took the file out of Dean’s hands and pushed a few pages aside, pulling out a news clipping. “Around the same time as these demon sightings started, another thing popped up in the same areas. It seems like there’s been this gang of cowboys who are going after these demons.”

“Yeah? Okay, so these must be weirdo hunters or something, right?” Dean focused back to his paper mountain range on the floor. “Nothing we need to worry about.”

“Sure,” Sam said, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes, “Except that these riders don’t leave any tracks.”

Dean slowly looked back. “What do you mean?”

“The riders,” Sam said. “They’ve been seen leaving multiple places where demons were gathered, but there are never any hoof prints to follow after them.”

“Ghost Riders?” Dean said, scoffing. “I think you’ve been reading too many of Kevin’s comic books, Sammy.”

“Come on, Dean!” Sam said. “Phantom cowboys who hunt demons? You can’t tell me in all honesty that you’re not even interested in checking it out.”

Dean sighed. “I know you’re just trying to distract me, dude—which is totally unnecessary, by the way. I’m fine.”

“I still think we should check it out,” Sam said. Dean shook his head.

"No thanks, man."

Dean thought that would be the end of it. He just wasn't in the mood for the good fight. Not today, anyway. Plus he had to figure out how to reorganize this...well, to restructure his archive mission.

Sam sighed. "I forgot one thing."

Dean humored his brother with a squint.

“It looks like the vics are mostly dudes." Dean waited and Sam eventually continued, rolling his eyes. "Dudes who get caught at underground, uh, gentlemen clubs.”

Dean's brain stopped. “Wait, strip joints? Seriously?”

Sam smiled. “Plus, we can take out those boots from the time we went back for the Colt.”

Damn, Sam knew him too well. “We still have those?”

"Yep. Oh, and here—."

Sam pulled out two bandanas, one that was bright red and tied the other one, a soft blue, around his own throat. He passed the red kerchief to Dean who grinned and took it gladly.

“Where’d you get these?” the bandana was soft in Dean’s hands, like it had been worn and washed for a long time.

Sam shrugged. “Picked them up in the thrift shop in town."

Dean hummed his approval and turned the red bandana over. He paused, "Uh, Sam?"

Sam glanced over and Dean showed him the underbelly of the bandana which had a large, obvious print of a black rabbit on it.

“What the hell?”

Sam blinked before grinning, and it was the most annoying thing Dean had ever seen. “I dunno, I think it suits you.” He ran away before Dean could stuff the stupid thing down his stupid throat.

Dean was about to leave the stupid thing on the table, but he looked at the soft material more closely and saw a strange pattern of embroidery on it. To his delight, Dean realized the silver and gold threads were stitched into small flames all around the scarf.

“Okay, you’re a little cool,” Dean muttered to the bandana, shoving it in his pocket, still quietly cursing his brother under his breath.

Yep, Sammy knew him way too well.

\----

So, that’s how Dean Winchester ended up at the wrong end of a rifle just outside an underground strip club in Williams, Arizona, surrounded by ghost cowboys.

“H-hey, uh, fellas.” Dean could feel perspiration dot his brow. If Dean hadn’t watched the gun currently pointed at his face blow through the chest of the demon he was fighting only twenty seconds ago, he might have thought it was as ghostly and immaterial as its owner. “That’s a...that’s a neat trick you got there. A ghost with a genuine firearm? That’s...that’s somethin’.”

As keen as these cowboys apparently were to shoot demons, they were not nearly so eager to do more than stare at Dean.

The cowboy cocked his gun and Dean wanted to kick the ground in frustration. “Aw, Come on!”

His brother was gonna kill him if Dean got out of this alive.

He shouldn’t have left Sam behind. He also probably shouldn’t have dropped his gun while he was fighting those shitty demons he’d accidentally come across outside of Kitty’s Kitten Den at the very edge of the two lane town.

The cowboy with the cocked gun made a low whistling noise, and slowly the heads turned away from Dean. Dean followed their gazes and saw a billow of phantom smoke. As the smoke got closer, he could almost feel the equine hoofbeats of the approaching apparitions beat against the dirt.

By the time the other ghosts showed up—twenty? maybe thirty more—with what seemed like very real guns, Dean was about ready to see how quickly he could load his rifle with rock salt and hopefully nuke these suckers. Just when Dean was about to leap into action, the sea of new apparitions parted to reveal a real, living and breathing horse: dappled gray and very uninterested in the army of ghosts around him, far more interested in the small tuft of yellowed grass at his feet.

The cowboys continued to stare. “What?” Dean was getting frustrated by the lack of communication and the overabundance of spectral/real rifles.

Still holding a rifle to Dean's face, the cowboy—maybe he was the leader?—whistled another low, almost breezy sound. The horse's ears perked up and with one final tug of grass, stood and trotted lazily over to Dean. When Dean turned his head to watch the horse, he felt the rifle—which was probably so damn cold because a _fucking_ ghost was holding it—gently press into the back of his neck like a caress. 

“Get on the horse,” the ghost cowboy said.

“I don’t know how to ride,” Dean replied. Why did he say that? When a mostly translucent dude tells you get on the horse, and he hasn't shot you yet, you just get on the freakin’ horse. Yet Dean stared at the horse, so much not like his car that was easy to control and soothe and use and wouldn’t kick him for no damn reason.

Dean felt his neck creak with tension as he minutely turned his head to look at the ghost cowboy, whose eyes were like black holes in his skull.

The cowboy raised an eyebrow. “Learn.”

So, that was how Dean found himself riding on a horse corralled by an incorporeal cavalry in the middle of fucking Arizona and he really wished he was back in the bunker, pissing Sam off with his (obviously genius) archiving plan.

He quickly discovered that they were quickly arriving at the Grand Canyon, not far off from Williams. Dean watched in horror as the cowboys began to disappear up ahead, going straight down into the canyon.

“Hey,” Dean said, holding onto his horse for dear life as its feet pummeled into the ground with voracious hooves. “Look, I’m not saying that you guys aren’t a blast to be around and everything. But, uh, I’m human and this is a cliff and I’d rather not die, thanks.”

Another eyeless ghost stared at him and Dean realized that if he didn’t think very quickly he was going to die probably the stupidest death he could imagine. Only thing that would be dumber is if he died of a food poisoned taco or something.

The canyon drew closer and Dean prepped to jump off the horse when he discovered to his continuing chagrin that he was actually stuck on the horse by some ephemeral force.

“Really?” Dean growled, glaring at the closest transient cowboy, who stared straight ahead over his horse’s galloping hooves and into the crevasse beyond. “What the hell did I do to you guys anyway?”

Dean prepared to meet his maker, something he’d had to do once or twice or a hundred times in his long 30 years, as he watched the cowboys descend into the Grand Canyon. Dean, unable to do anything else, shut his eyes. God he hated heights, the weightless helpless feeling that gripped his gut and made him want to upchuck his lunch. This would be the way he would go, just so the world could laugh at Dean Winchester one last damned time.

The world tilted and Dean's eyelids squeezed shut so tightly that white flashed before his eyes . Yet, after a moment, the feeling stopped. He could still feel the chugging of hooves under him, propelling him forward. 

Dean opened one eye and saw, to his amazement, that he was somehow riding on top of the Grand Canyon, flying above the bottomless hole as the horse’s feet pounded into the air. He did not look down for long as he could already feel his stomach violently churn seeing the endless valley below.

Instead, he stared at his dapple grey horse, who paid no attention to the man on his back. “What the hell are you?” Dean asked. The horse grunted, but pressed forward. They rode on—Dean, the horse, and the ghost cowboys—until Dean could make out a cave off in the distance.

After what seemed like forever,long after Dean’s stomach had migrated down to his boots, he and his spooky entourage entered the cave which ended up being far deeper than he first realized. They practically flew down the slate pathway, the cave getting narrower and narrower as they cantered deeper into the cave.

With a sudden jolt in the complete darkness, his horse and the others stopped. Dean could hear the huffs of ghostly horse breath, but their riders remained completely silent. Whatever pressure held him to the saddle loosened, and Dean slid off the horse, landing on his own two feet with only a slight tremor. The ghost riders reached into their saddle bags, and slowly the dark cave was lit by a soft orange glow.

The candles and their flames were translucent like their owners. “What the hell are you guys?” his voice echoed even at a whisper, darting on the walls like a spastic dancer all the way up to the mouth of the cave.

“They prefer to be called the Red Jack Gang.” Dean searched around the cave for the source of the voice, the first one Dean heard besides the gun-happy one who'd bullied him unto the horse. “Although they are all from completely the wrong time period and seem to have taken up a new profession, so your guess is as good as mine.”

It was a new voice amongst the mostly silent ghost gang, yet so familiar and Dean’s throat was suddenly tight and his back stiffened.

Slowly he turned, and the lights of the cowboys standing behind him opened a path between Dean and another man—corporeal and tall. He wore a dark leather coat that reached down to his knees. The coat was open, flung back casually to reveal a pair of jeans tucked into high, black boots with spurs that clacked with each step.

Dean’s eyes traveled upwards, up a black button up shirt that was done up halfway, his throat open and bare. A hat worthy of a sheriff sat on the man’s head, but was dark like the color of his coat and his eyes may have been hidden by the brim but Dean could pick out that gently bobbing Adam’s apple anywhere.

“Cas?” Dean's voice barely carried beyond the pebbles at their feet, yet it was enough to cause the man to glance up, tipping his hat back. And there, in the soft orange glow of phantom candles, Dean saw his prodigal angel’s blue eyes. “Cas, man, is that you?”

Castiel tipped his head, nodding, before quirking it to the side. “Dean. What are you doing here?”

Dean blinked. "Uh, I could ask you the same thing. Hell, where have you  _been?"_

"You didn't answer my question."

“Seriously? That’s how we're gonna do this?"

Castiel cocked his head, that confused look on his face mottled and given a mysterious cast in the dim cave. "Do this? Do what, Dean?"

Dean didn't really know. He didn't really care. He told Sam that he was fine, and he was fine! Castiel could do what he wanted, which was why he was more mad at himself than anyone else when he barked back, "No phone calls. No magical swooping in to check on Sam and I? Just ‘what are you doing here?’ Why do you wanna know?” Dean huffed, stepping back to the horse with his hands in fists. “What so you can get me to leave? What’d I even do to you, man?”

Dean didn’t realize how upset he was, how flimsy the dam holding him and his frustration together was, until Castiel was suddenly in his face, hands on his shoulders, hat tipped back far enough that his eyes were free to bore into Dean’s with powerful precision.

“No, Dean." Castiel's blue eyes were lasers and Dean wanted to look away. The angel glanced away first. "I...I’m happy you’re here. But now is simply not a good time to catch up.”

Dean blinked. “What do you mean?”

Castiel gestured to the ghosts, but Dean shrugged. You see one ghost, you see ‘em all. Didn’t mean that Castiel needed to hide from Dean for the past...how long had it been? He crossed his arms, waiting for an answer.

Castiel rolled his eyes. “I’m working a case, Dean.”

“A case?” Castiel was working a case? Alone? As in without him? Or Sam? “That’s bullshit!”

Castile hushed him. “Come, I have somewhere we can talk.” Castiel ushered Dean forward, but Dean looked back at the ghostly crew.

“What about these guys?” Dean asked. Castiel shrugged.

“They’ve been helping me these past few days. In fact it was because of their activity that I found this case at all. But they are self sufficient, and have been roaming the plains long before we—well, you—were here to muck around in it.” Castiel gripped Dean’s shoulder with one hand, ushering him through the crowd of soft glowing candles. He turned to face the cowboys before they left the group completely. “Thank you, boys, for your help.”

One of the cowboys brought his horse forward. It was the same ghost that had talked to Dean earlier. Looking at him now, Dean could see a star on the ghost’s lapel: “Prospector,” it read. The prospector nodded and Castiel tipped his (admittedly really cool) hat before the whole phantom troupe, all except the dapple gray horse that had found a corner of the cave to relax in, disappeared into the mouth of the cave and were gone.

Castiel brought Dean further into the cave before suddenly there was a narrow passage of bright light. Dean walked through it and realized it was a sort of home that was built inside of the cave.

“I found this here,” Castiel said as Dean looked around with wonder. “This used to be a ranger’s headquarters, or at least it looks like it, but it is abandoned. So I decided to use it for a while.”

They entered a room that was brighter than the rest, cardamom walls and a dark oak table with two chairs sat in the middle of the room. Papers were spread all around the table, and Dean could see everything from newspaper clippings to photographs and hand drawn monsters scattered amidst books and pens and one half eaten doughnut.

“You have food down here?” Dean asked.

Castiel nodded, walking towards the fridge in the corner and taking out two chilled beers. “I knew that I would be camping out here and investigating this case for a while, so I stocked up.”

"I didn't know you ate," Dean said, vaguely gesturing to Castiel's body which earned him an unamused eyebrow. "I mean, you got your mojo back and whatever, right?"

"Ah, yes," Castiel said, then shrugged. "Apparently, I am still human enough to give in to vice." He gave the half eaten doughnut a warm smile (and Dean was not going to be jealous of a goddamn doughnut, not that there was anything to be jealous of and—).

“You keep saying you're camping out here,” Dean said, leaning against one of the walls. “But you aren’t saying why. Why are you here? I…” _I was calling for you_ , remained stinging on the back of his throat, unvoiced.

“Well, I suppose it’s good fortune that you’re here,” Castiel said. “I am here because of a prophecy. You might be able to help me.”

Of course he was.

“Oh yeah,” Dean asked, rolling his eyes. He kicked one of his booted feet over the other, slumping against the wall with a little more attitude. “Because I have such a good track record with helping prophecies come true.”

It was Castiel’s turn to roll his eyes. “It’s exactly your track record to the opposite that I might be able to use you for. Also, stop slouching.”

Dean blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Stop slouching,” Castiel said, turning away from him to pick out a piece of paper from the table. Dean mimicked him, but the angel’s back was turned so he didn’t appear to notice. Dean straightened up none the less, and walked to stand behind Castiel.

Castiel took off his hat to rest it on the peg of a nearby chair, and Dean didn’t care at all. Nope, it totally was no big deal. Castiel’s hair was damp underneath, matted down by the heat of the Arizona summer and by the weight of his hat. Dean didn’t want to fix it, not really. Cas just looked like an idiot was all.

And it was sort of like his hand was acting without his knowledge, like hands like to do so sometimes. Otherwise he definitely wouldn’t have reached out to fix Castiel’s hair. Blue eyes looked back at him, surprised, and Dean’s traitorous hand immediately shot back down. He wiped the sweat from Cas’s dampened strands on his jeans.

“What?” Dean asked, brusquely. Cas, as if he didn’t know quite that to do about what Dean’s stupid stupid hand—that Dean would be having a very serious conversation with later—had been up to, just shrugged and looked back at the table.

“There have been multiple demon sightings all around Arizona,” Castiel said, pointing at a map that had crisp red x’s marked in seemingly random parts of the map.

“Any relation to each other?”

“All of the sightings occur at strip clubs,” Castiel said, gesturing to the small pictures of dark buildings with neon signs, others that looked like abandoned buildings stuck in the middle of a dry suburbia. “But otherwise the only thing that ties these clubs together are the murders.”

Castiel digs underneath one of the piles until he takes out a manilla folder, pictures of recently deceased bodies and their coroner reports neatly photocopied making it thick as a book.

Dean picked up the folder from Castiel’s hands and leafed through it. “All men,” Dean observed, confirmed by Castiel’s hum.

“Yes, Dean.” He walked away from the table towards a laptop that looked a little worse for wear—the screen was cracked and it looked like the letter “Q” had been nibbled on at some point. The computer booted up when Castiel opened it. “Which brings us to the prophecy.”

“What? Does Wikipedia have a prophecy page now?” Dean asked, leaning back against the table as he watched Castiel’s slow, methodical hands type on the ratty keyboard.

“Not quite,” Castiel deadpanned, and Dean rolled his eyes. Same sense of humor, then. “But while I was researching the deaths and trying to catch the similarities, I came across this website.”

He pulls up what looks like something made ten years ago if the bouncing graphics were any indication, and lets Dean navigate the page. At the top of it in a lime green Chiller font read “The Rise of Tu Er Shen.”

“What the hell is this?” Dean scrolled down. “This looks like a bunch of garbage, Cas.”

“I thought the same thing,” Castiel said, taking over the computer and scrolling down, “but looked at who wrote it.”

Dean leaned over and scanned the page until he found, at the very bottom, “For more information, contact Justin Hunt at [ jhun6111111@geocities.com  ](mailto:jhun61@yahoo.com).”

“Okay,” Dean said, stepping back. “Still don’t get it.”

Castiel glared at Dean. “Really? Dean? You don’t remember?” Dean shrugged, trying to rack his brain but the name, none of this came up.

“He’s a prophet, Dean. He was the next in line after Kevin.”

Dean shook his head. “No, but you told me that Metatron turned off the ‘Prophet switch’ or whatever.”

“He did,” Castiel said, “but as soon as he was locked up we found this ‘switch,’ which was...really a whole event unto itself, but it is back on, and Justin Hunt is now the prophet of the Lord.”

Dean frowned, turning from Castiel to the screen, staring at the bright letters and dancing ghosts on the computer screen. “Really?”

“This prophecy is what brought me here,” Castiel said, scrolling through the long page until he reached a particular paragraph. “It matched what was happening with all the recent murders and demon sightings, and thankfully it gives us a way to fix this before it becomes the next apocalypse.”

“Ah, so a change of pace then?” Dean said.

“Well, it depends,” Castiel said. “The prophecy says that the false god Tu Er Shen will return on the two thousandth and fourteenth year after the death of Jesus Christ. It says that he has returned to avenge his death on mankind.”

“Avenge his death?” Dean asked. “I thought he was a god.”

“He is a god of Chinese lore,” Castiel explained, “Legend has it that he was a man, a soldier named Hu Tianbao. He fell in love with an imperial official, and was caught spying on him while he bathed.”

“Creepy,” Dean remarked.

“Yes, well, the official had Hu Tianbao arrested and executed through a vicious beating. It was after that he became a god of love and sex between men.” Castiel took the picture and put it down, walking back towards the computer but Dean grabbed him before he could go too far.

“Wait, so this…we’re going after creepy old Chinese gay dude?”

“God,” Castiel corrected, “but, yes. He never seemed to pose a particular problem before, but with this prophecy I believe we might have a bit more of a crisis than we imagined.” He shook Dean’s hand away and went back to the computer.

“The prophecy says that he will achieve the most power when he finds the man who bears his mark and claims him as his own.”

Dean felt weird about this whole situation, squirming uncomfortably where he stood. “What does it matter if a guy gets his rocks off? I mean, also, who’s gonna sleep with a super old dude?”

“God, Dean,” Castiel corrected, again, “Tu Er Shen is a god, and considering he is a god of lust and sex, he can probably transform himself to look however his future mate wants him to look.”

Dean nodded, taking that in stride. “Okay, then so what? Two dudes want to...you know, do the do and whatever, why does that mean the world is going to end?”

“Because if Tu Er Shen finds the man carrying his mark and “do the do” with him,” Dean rolled his eyes at Castiel’s air quotes, “then it will cause the entirety of the human race to become barren and, as you can imagine, the human race will no longer be able to carry on.”

“Oh,” Dean said. “Yeah, yeah that would do it.” But there was one thing—well there were many things he didn’t _quite_ get about all this, but anyway—that Dean didn’t understand.

“Why Arizona?”

“Your guess is as good as mine I’m afraid,” Castiel replied, “although it might have to do with the rampant amount of homophobia this state is famous for. Perhaps he wants to spread the idea of free homosexual love to even the least likely of places."

"Maybe he likes a challenge," Dean quipped.

Castiel shrugged. "All speculation of course, but it is obvious he is settled here, searching for his mate.”

“So what is his mark?”

Castiel rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, there have been two things connecting each of the victims together.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, they were all gay men.”

Dean shrugged. “Makes sense.”

“And two, they each carried a red bandana.”

Dean froze. Slowly, he looked back in his pocket at the red bandana tucked in his pocket.

Castiel didn’t notice. “I started working with the ghost horseback riders you met earlier, and they have been very helpful in tracking the demons—who I suppose Tu Er Shen has hired as his henchmen—and stopping them before they kill the next victim. We’ve prevented three deaths in the past two weeks by doing so, which is why I was surprised that they brought you back.”

“You were?” Dean squeaked. “Surprised, I mean?”

“Well, yes,” Castiel said with a sigh. “And the Prospector told me before you arrived that the demons were far less violent than they usually were, like they weren’t there to kill this time. Which makes me believe that the mate was actually at the club this time, rather than another wild goose chase.”

“Oh,” Dean said, gulping. “How about that.”

Castiel stopped his monologue, as if suddenly realizing that Dean was acting peculiar. “Dean?”

“Hm, yeah it’s definitely weird that I happened to be there when the actual Chinese dude mate was there, that’s pretty strange hmm.” Dean started moving towards the exit, but Castiel caught up to him and grabbed his arm.

“Dean are you gay?”

“Woah, Cas,” Dean said, shaking off the man’s arm. “How about you buy me dinner first?”

“Deflection,” Castiel said. “So you are.”

“Excuse me!” Dean said, Castiel blinked at him. Dean tried to start the next bit, tried to deny how his fingers clenched and his toes curled when he thought of Dr. Sexy or Ryan Reynolds or...or...no, stop. Dean sighed. “Okay, I’m bi. I guess. Thanks for asking so politely, by the way.”

Dean was being sarcastic, obviously. Castiel did not pick up on it.

“Dean, do you have a red bandana?”

Dean remembered his previous horror, before his friend went inquisitor squad on his ass, and laughed, but it didn’t sound quite as genuine or non-hysterical as he’d hoped. “What? Bandana? I’ve never...what even is a...it’s just a scarf or something…red is totally not my color at all.”

Castiel reached around into Dean’s back pocket, much to Dean’s yelping and somewhat faked displeasure. He yanked out the bandana. “Dean.”

“It was Sam! He gave it to me, maybe he’s the mate or whatever!”

Castiel opened up the bandana fully and looked it over. “Dean, why is there a rabbit on this?”

“I don’t know! My brother’s a bitch?” Dean realized something. “Wait, but it has a stupid drawing on it. Can’t be a stupid god’s mark or anything, right?”

“Dean.” Castiel’s tone urged anymore gabbing madness to stop dead in Dean’s throat. “Dean, Tu Er Shen is the rabbit deity.”

“What?” Dean exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air. “How? How is that fair? How can you be two deities, anyway? It’s just a stupid design!”

“And it’s marked you, Dean.” Castiel said, folding up the bandana. “You are destined to be Tu er Shen’s mate or save the world.”

Silence pulsed between them and Dean stared at the bandana, both betrayed and resigned.

“So,” Dean said with a small, breathless and completely lackluster chuckle. “Nothing new, then?”

Dean kind of wanted to curl up in a ball and hide forever. Hey, maybe if he did that he’d stop the prophecy and everything would be okay.

But then the demons would keep killing gay dudes at strip clubs just because they wore the wrong color kerchief. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work.

“Well...this is unexpected but still, we’ll make due.”

Dean glanced up and saw that Castiel was suddenly hovering much closer than he was before. He was so close that Dean could smell dirt and sweat, musk from Castiel’s tanned skin. He could see the hair growing on the angel’s chin, and watched how determination made Castiel’s eyes flash a bright cerulean.

“What do you mean?” Dean murmured, Castiel so close, so warm that he didn’t really know what to do with his own hands.

“What I mean, Dean Winchester,” Castiel’s eyes latched onto Dean’s, as did his fingertips as they draped up Dean’s arm. He gently gripped the bicep, while is other hand slid around Dean’s neck, pulling tenderly at Dean’s hair at the base of his skull. Hot, tingling flashes burst up from his skin to make Dean's mouth water, and slowly Castiel leaned towards him. “is that we need to teach you how to resist temptation.”

Breathing, breathing was really hard when there was a warm, gentle angel petting and pressing into him.

“And how,” Dean had to swallow, an audible sound, “how are we gonna do that?”

Castiel leaned in closer, his stubbly face nearly touching Dean’s, breath scorching his cheek and causing muscles far below to twitch. “I am an angel of the Lord, Dean Winchester,” he murmured, voice both low and gritty, “I’ll figure it out.”

And suddenly, Castiel was out of Dean’s arms and across the room. The door slammed behind him and Dean was left bewildered.

“Shit,” he whispered, leaning back against the wall, trying to breathe.

This was not going to be good.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks to my awesome friend and editor Deeleybopper. Any and all mistakes are my own and I will own up to them happily (and mostly with some shame).

Apparently, Castiel’s plan to prepare for the inevitable run in with the Chinese gay rabbit god was to make Dean lose his goddamned mind.

“I called Sam to let him know that you are here. He will continue letting us know if any other clubs are targeted while we are training.”

They were sitting in Castiel’s kitchen, each with a cup of instant brew coffee in their hands.

Dean didn’t dare look at Cas, staring at the kettle on the stove top with a fierce determination. “Whatever. I don’t even get why we have to do this.”

"You must be able to resist me, Dean,” Castiel said tucking into his breakfast of bread and butter substitute—which wasn’t a real breakfast in Dean’s book but was really all they had in this weird cave cabin. He wanted a stack of pancakes and no damn margarine (no matter how incredulous it was) was gonna change that.  

"Why does it have to be you?" Dean's fingers twitched onto the table, idly playing with his toast. Why did Castiel have to be the one showing him how to resist? Dean didn't let himself think about this sort of thing, not with Cas. He never let his mind wander to the warm pool of tender, thoughtless touches and far-too-long-yet-not-long-enough stares that razed his skin with tingling goosebumps.

And now Dean was sticking his foot right into it, and he wasn't fool enough to think that Castiel—an angel—could ever, would even think about, actually fulfilling those soft fever dreams of desire that buzzed across Dean's traitorous mind.

They were wisps, nothing more, but if Castiel kept pushing it Dean knew that there were only so many ways this could go.

Castiel didn't rise to the bait like Dean thought he might, but instead shrugged. "Well it's either me or one of the members of the Red Jack Gang outside. Whichever you'd prefer."

Dean snorted. "Fair." It wasn't, not really, but fair rarely played a role in any of this horseshit, anyway.

Dean finally looked at the angel. Castiel was still wearing his boots, but went more for his old style this morning: white button up shirt, tie, khakis. Dean sort of missed the hat, but kept his mouth shut.

"But can't I just go in there and chop his head off?” Dean asked. "None of this resistance shit is necessary if the dude is dead." Castiel shook his head, taking a bite of his pathetic breakfast.

"You have to do more than just kill him,” Castiel explained. “You must convince him that you are his mate, and you must make him want you and then you may kill him. He must be slain the same way he was slain before, through lust and heartbreak and betrayal. Otherwise he will return and the cycle will start again, and I don’t think you’ll be as lucky getting him to want you a second time.”

"But I’m his mate, or whatever,” Dean said. “Shouldn’t that make him want me anyway?”

"He’s a sex god, Dean,” Castiel said. “Not some magic dildo that you can turn on and off. He’s got feelings, you know.”

Dean nodded, somewhat chastened, dragging his finger across a long crack on the Formica tabletop. “It sort of sucks, don’t you think?”

"What does?”

Dean pushed away his breakfast, not very hungry, taking up his coffee instead. It tasted like sludge and felt gritty going down, but he knew he was going to need it in order to forge ahead on whatever this freak show was going to be. “I mean, I get it, he was a creeper and all of that. But he was just a dude who liked other dudes, you know? And now he’s in a prophecy and he’s gonna die the same way he died before. It just...it’s sad, is all.”

Castiel also seemed finished with his breakfast, pushing it away and standing up. “Perhaps, but we must fulfill our duty to save the world.”

“I guess,” Dean muttered. Cas was right. This was a job, just as much as any other case was a job. He was prevented from further speculation of sad little gay asian gods by hands caressing his shoulders.

“Cas?”

“Shh,” Castiel’s fingertips danced across Dean’s shoulders before taking root, digging into his muscles. Dean’s eyelids fluttered. “Resist me, Dean.”

“Huh?” Dean asked, the tingling sensation running up and down his arms making his head feel sluggish.

“You must resist me, Dean.” Castiel said, leaning forward to capture Dean’s ear in his mouth, his tongue caressing the shell with nothing but a gentle graze. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and low. “Talk to me, you must be able to mentally distance yourself from my ministrations. Don’t give in.”

Dean’s whole body practically groaned. “Cas,” he huffed. “Cas I can’t. Not when you do shit like that.”

“You must.” Castiel’s fingers dug further into Dean’s shoulders and Dean had to bite back a moan. “Tell me about your brother. How is he doing?”

“S-Sammy?” Dean didn’t want to think about Sam as his ear was assaulted by Castiel’s warm breath which curled down his neck. Dean’s arms felt like jello.

“Dean, try.”

Dean cleared his throat. “R-right.” He tried to ignore the touch, the caress of Castiel’s nose which had settled in his hair, inhaling Dean who was distinctly struggling in this exercise. “Sammy’s fine. He-he got pissed at me th-the other day.”

“Oh?” Castiel’s voice was soft, breathy, and puffed a line of quivering warmth down the back of Dean's neck. “What happened?”

Castiel’s tongue again stroked his ear, but Dean was prepared, he was ready and only gave the tiniest groan before answering.

“I tried reorganizing the archives,” he said, taking a deep breath, trying to imagine himself anywhere but here, feeling anything but Castiel’s body close to his own, anything but his wet, hot tongue—okay, that didn’t work. “But I guess I wasn’t doing them the way he wanted.”

Castiel hummed, sending a vibration from his throat straight through Dean’s skin. Dean fought off the shiver.

Castiel continued his massage for a few more moments, Dean quietly battling the need to pull the man closer, pull those terribly delightful lips and that sinful angel tongue towards his own. Then, when Dean thought he might burst, Castiel stepped away.

“Good, Dean. Good.” Castiel took up his dishes, putting them in the sink before walking out of the room.

Dean felt cold.

\----

Dean was brushing his teeth when he felt hands, those same sumptuous hands, wrap firmly around his waist.

“Hey Cas,” he said, back tensing.

“Breathe,” Castiel said, and the angel aligned himself with Dean. Dean tried to do as he said, breathing. His back fit so well with Castiel’s front, the angel’s strong abdominals expanding with air as their breathing synchronized with ease.

“What can I do for you, Cas?” Castiel’s hands were resting right above his hips where Dean’s nerves liked to dance under his skin, sending tendrils of pleasure and need and so much fucking want straight up to his head and down to his toes.

“Turn around.”

Dean spit in the sink, bending over—briefly closing his eyes in pleasure as he felt the angel’s body press into his lower back—to rinse out his mouth before pressing his hands against the counter.

“I don’t think I should.”

Castiel laughed, softly. “You think the god of sex is going to settle with just coming up from behind you?”

“Isn’t that sort of the point?”

Ignoring Dean’s crass humor, Castiel gently turned Dean in his arms so that they were nose to nose. Dean’s voice sounded strangled as he spoke. “How is this going to help me?”

“You have to keep a clear head. This god will know exactly what you want, what you desire, and will be happy to give it to you. You must resist it.” Castiel placed a hand on his face, thumb brushing his cheek as his other fingers gently wrapped around his jaw.

Dean takes a deep breath, closing his eyes in part to avoid the angel’s eyes melting his skin with their too-gorgeous stare, and also in part to keep himself under control.

“Dean.”

Opening his eyes, he almost regretted that he didn’t squeeze his eyes shut and never, ever open them again. Castiel’s eyes, pale blue and consuming, were so close and his lips, goddamn, were so hot and near his own that Dean could taste the coffee with each small, desperate puff of air.

Dean could feel lips brush his own, not yet a kiss but so promising. Dean could lean just a little more forwards, capture those lips, grip those arms and pull Castiel to him in less than a second. He could make the angel moan under his fingertips, could truly taste the coffee flavored tongue which Castiel flicked out to wet his own lips.

“Damn it, Cas,” he whispered.

“Dean,” Castiel murmurs back, and Dean can practically feel the words forming physically between them. “You cannot be so easily swayed, if I can seduce you then surely the god of lust will be able to.”

Dean licks his lips. The stupid, stupid, fucking sexy angel is right, but that doesn’t mean that Dean’s exactly happy about it.

He took a deep breath. “I really miss Kevin, sometimes.”

Castiel pauses, then as if he realized that Dean was trying something, he resumed his task, gently brushing his lips over Dean’s and occasionally diverting. He went over Dean’s cheeks, his neck, fingers following his lips as if to seal their heat on Dean’s skin.

“He was just a kid,” Dean said, focusing on the young boy and his charm and how fucking naive he’d been and how much Dean wished that boy could have gone on to school, could have been the crazy neurotic type A brat who went to Princeton or Dartmouth or wherever. “It wasn’t his fault he was a prophet.”

Castiel’s tongue now followed the same path his lips once traveled, but Dean forced his mind on Kevin.

“He trusted me to protect him,” Dean said, his stomach feeling cold. “He trusted me, my brother.  And Sammy...God, I don’t know if he’ll ever really forgive himself.”

“If I hadn’t involved you both, none of this would have happened.”

Dean realized, after a moment, that Castiel had stopped. He was staring at the ground, his hands no longer tempting but holding on to Dean. He wasn’t trying to tease, but looked as though he was trying to hold on. “It was as much my fault as it was Gadreel’s. Metatron’s. But it wasn’t yours. It wasn’t Sam’s.”

“No, Cas,” Dean said. “Don’t be an idiot, all right? We were involved no matter whether or not you were there.”

Castiel winced and suddenly, it was like a light bulb flashed behind Dean’s eyes.

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding—.”  _M_ _e_ , he wanted to say, _is that why you've been avoiding me?_ “—avoiding the bunker?”

Castiel stepped back from Dean. “You’re doing well, Dean. Just keep concentrating.”

“Wait. Cas!” But Castiel was gone. With a vexed shout Dean kicked the bathroom cabinet, and immediately regretting it as it throbbed in his boot. “Damn it.”

\------

Dean thought he could go for a short wander around the cave, unable to find the angel anywhere. Assuming Cas had gone to do some angel business or to mope or whatever, Dean walked out of the ranger’s quarters and found his horse, the one that had carried him across the Grand Canyon.

“Hey, baby,” he said to the horse, softly. The horse neighed, bobbing his head and nudging one foot forward. Big brown eyes fixed on Dean and the horse pressed his head against Dean’s hand.

He laughed. “Oh you just want attention don’t you?” The horse grunted, obviously enjoying the scratches on his muzzle. Soon Dean began stroking the horse’s mane, soft and frizzy under his fingertips.

“His name’s Heathcliff.”

Dean jumped in surprise. The prospector stepped forward, his own phantom horse not present. The heavy cowboy stepped with a resonant click of ghostly spurs as he got closer to Dean and his horse. His transparent, gloved hand also stroked the horse’s mane, doing little more than ruffle the hair, like a breeze.

“He’s beautiful,” Dean said, noticing the glint of love and affection in the ghost’s eyes. The ghost hummed. “Have there been any updates? You know...with demons and the strip joints? Any more deaths?”

The prospector shook his head. “They know it’s you. I suspect the demons are lookin’ for where you went offta’. They better find you soon, though, or else I’m sure we’ll be seeing even more blood than before.” The man tutted. “Innocent blood. It’s so useless.”  
  


Dean silently brushed the ghost’s mane, stepping to the side and stroking his long neck. “Cas was tellin’ me you and your men were the ones that helped alert him to what was goin’ on?”

The prospector nodded. “We’ve been chasin’ these folks since the New Year. They don’t die, damn it, but we slow ‘em down a little. Get the innocent to safety.”

Dean had more questions. He stroked the horse’s mane, trying to organize his thoughts.

“So, why do you call yourselves—?” Dean cut off his question, because the prospector was gone.

\----

Castiel didn’t show up for the rest of the day, so Dean called Sam.

“Have you heard anything new?” Dean asked.

“Nah,” Sam replied, “Oh, well, actually I found out that a microwave uses more energy to power its clock than it does to heat your food.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I meant for the case, Bitch! Not from your nerd fun-fact catalog.” He paused. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, really weird right?”

“But how is that even possible?”

“I have no clue. Science, I guess.”

Dean shook his head. “Okay, so nothing on the case? Have you talked to anyone in town?”

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam said, immediately adopting the irritated tone that Dean knew and loved (well, kinda) so well. “But no one knows anything. And since you were the one the demons were after in this town, it doesn’t look like anyone here is going to be of use.”

“What about the other towns? Have you tried out any of the other places?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, Dean, there really wasn’t much information anywhere. The guys who got killed? Some of them weren’t even from the towns they got killed in. There was really no logic to why they were picked off or anything.”

Dean picked at a stray thread on his bed sheet. “They were gay, dude.”

Sam stuttered to a stop. “They were gay?”

“Yeah, the perp is some...some gay sex god or something. He was looking for his mate so he could destroy the human race or some crap.”

The silence over the phone was palpable. Sam spoke up first. “So...and you’re the one? The mate?”

Dean realized, now, that he just outed himself to his brother and it was a total accident and definitely something he did not want to talk about while he was stuck in some cave cabin (how the hell was his phone even working here?) while his brother was miles away and probably going to have a conniption.

“Oh, uh, listen. It looks like there something going on here...yeah gotta go.”

“No, Dean! Wait!” Sam shouted.

“Going through a tunnel, bye!” Dean hung up the phone, tossing it aside. “Damn it.”

Dean lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He sighed. This was all gonna bite him in the ass wasn’t it? He heard his phone buzz but turned it off and tucked it far away on the bedside table.

He lay back, hands cushioning his head. The bed was lumpy, nothing like his amazing mattress back in the bunker.

He just wanted to go home. He wanted to take Cas with him, too, but that was looking less and less likely as they day wore on into night and Dean was left on his own.

Dean’s eyes were just beginning to grow heavy in the dark room when his bedroom door quietly opened. “Cas?”

The other man was silent so Dean went over to the side of his bed, turning on the lamp. It doused the room in a soft, yellow glow.

Castiel shut the door behind him, tie removed and his shirt slightly opened like it had been the other day. He was wearing his dark brown, wide-brimmed hat and his skin glistened with sweat from the Arizona heat.

“Cas, where were you?” The angel’s shirt was sticking to him, and Dean could see thick muscles that clung to the soft cotton fabric. Castiel walked towards him, considering and slow. Dean sat up on his bed. “Cas? Come on man, speak to me.”

Castiel hushed him with a finger, pressed against Dean’s lips, that smelled like the desert air. He swung a leg over to straddle Dean.

“No talking.” Castiel’s tone was mild, like he was about to discuss the weather and wasn’t currently positioned over Dean’s junk.

“You got boots on my bed,” Dean muttered, but he didn’t really mind. Castiel hushed him again, leaning over Dean and pressing his hands against the headboard. Dean’s back slid further into the mattress as Castiel settled himself right over Dean’s pelvis.

“Resist me, Dean,” Castiel growled, and grinded into Dean. Dean gasped, immediately seeing stars and like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world that could fill his lungs.

“Cas,” he breathed. Castiel hushed him again, rolling his hips. Dean groaned, strained. His hands were in fists on his side. Cas’s hips pulsed over his own, pressing again and again and again causing Dean’s cock to swell and his lip to bleed as his teeth gnashed around the soft flesh.

“You’ll have to act like you’re enjoying it, Dean,” Castiel replied. Dean blinked at him, and a moan was startled out of him as Castiel’s bulge met Dean’s with every humping movement.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he whined, his voice like a cry as his fists shook, white knuckled and desperate to take Castiel in his arms and hold him and hump him oh god.

“Tu Er Shen will expect you to enjoy it.” Castiel grunted, arms settling around Dean’s head, pushing his face closer to Dean’s and Dean could smell the fresh air and dirt in his hair, on his skin. “You have to react, Dean, but you also need to remember what your mission is. You cannot forget why you are there, or else humanity is lost.”

“Well,” Dean panted, fists shaking beside him. “How the hell do I do that?”  

Castiel paused for a brief instant and Dean could feel the angel's breath—humid against his throat and the pattering of an ancient heartbeat tangled with Dean's own. Dean shifted his head to look at Cas, to see what he was thinking. Castiel, however was staring right back. Something, something dark and so unlike Cas and yet so incredibly _Cas_ , poured into Dean through those two, blue eyes.

Castiel's voice was hoarse. “I have no idea.”

Dean swallowed, audibly, and suddenly lips were pressed into his and everything was smoke. Dean clutched at Castiel with a desperate moan, clashing tongues warring for space, for dominance, for skin.

“Cas,” he gasped as the other pressed his hungry lips against Dean’s skin, searing flames into his very bones.

Their cocks surged against each other through denim with each thrust of their pelvises, quickly finding rhythm with each other, and Castiel’s chest heaved burning breaths over Dean with each kiss.

Dean’s eyes opened and he could have moaned just at the sight of Castiel, cowboy hat far back on his head and shirt drenched in sweat. The angel was moaning soft, pitiful grunts of frustration as his hips pressed down with each stroke into Dean.

God, there was nothing Dean wanted more than to grab Castiel, and dig his fingers into his flesh and latch teeth and tongue and lips on his neck.  

But fortunately, or unfortunately, Dean was very, very good at denying himself what he really wanted. And as he reached out, hoping to tug the angel flush against his chest, a voice soft and teasing and low permeated his mind.

 _You need to react._ Castiel’s words pummeled back into his mind,  _b_ _ut you need to remember the mission._

He needed to remember. He needed to get through this, defeat this sex god to save the world, and he had to keep control even as Castiel’s passionate hands gripped at his shoulders like cast iron clamps of heat.

Dean pushed at Castiel who, not expecting the sudden reaction, was flung to the other side of the bed with one more shove.

“Dean?”

Dean didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at Castiel, or at the wall, or at that damn hat. Dean sat up, quickly pressed to his feet, and marched out the door.

He washed his face in the bathroom and must have spent close to a half hour trying to relax, only succeeding after taking a cold shower and thinking of anything, _anything_ other than the angel panting in his bed.

When he finally made it back to his bedroom, Castiel was nowhere to be seen.

\----------

After a fitful night of sleep, Dean woke up determined.

He was going to find those damn demons and maybe kill a couple or ten, get that stupid sex god to stop trying to ruin the human race, then he was going to go fucking home.

Castiel was easier to find this morning, the ghost prospector and he gathered together to speak in low voices. Dean was not in the mood for waiting, or for whatever Castiel or the spectral rodeo had up their sleeves today.

They were finishing this. Today.

Castiel practically squeaked with surprise when Dean grabbed the man by the back of his coat. He pulled the angel back and quickly gripped the stubbled chin between his own thick fingers. Before Castiel could complain or even utter a syllable, Dean was pressed in with a fierce, deadly kiss.

The cave was quiet, even the horses stopped their shuffling. Dean could feel the stares on his back, and could remember the name of all fifty states, and he was not going to let anything else delay this—even though there was a part of him, a small and desperate part, that wanted nothing more than to sear Castiel’s flesh with his own feverish body.

Dean pulled away and he really couldn’t help smiling a self-satisfied smirk when he saw Castiel’s suddenly glazed eyes staring at him.

“Let’s get this asshole,” Dean said.

Castiel blinked. He blinked again, like he was unable to look anywhere but at Dean. The prospector gently nudged Castiel but being he was a fucking ghost Castiel didn’t notice.

Dean laughed. “Cas?”

That, however, seemed to wake Castiel out of his reverie. Then, with a smile that made Dean’s determination soften for an instant, Castiel nodded. “All right. Let’s get this assbutt.”

Close enough.

Still, something cold gripped Dean’s heart as he watched Castiel animatedly talk to the ghosts. Yeah, he was ready to make out with some creepy vengeful sex god and then what? Then go off back to his bunker, and hold out for the next case, wait for the next time he happens upon Cas—who’s supposed to be his best friend for heaven’s sake but doesn’t want to be around him unless it’s for some mission or job.

The fact was, no matter how this day ended, nothing would change. Nothing was different between Cas and him, because Cas did this all so Dean would be able to defeat a monster. Nothing more.

And Dean didn’t care. He really, really didn’t.

\---

Sam finally came across something useful: Tu Er Shen’s hiding place. “He’s five hours out, near the Hoover Dam. I’ve got the GPS coordinates here.”

“The Hoover Dam?” Dean asked, frowning at the phone Castiel and Dean were speaking to Sam through on speaker phone. “What the hell's out there...I mean, other than, you know, the dam.”

“Apparently there's a new hotel out there,” Sam said, squinting at the name. “it's called the Midnight Visitor.”

“That's...direct,” Castiel quietly observed.

Dean nodded but didn’t say anything else about it. It didn't matter at the end of the day. He didn’t care about how much sense it made or how the hell Sam even got that information, he just wanted to get this over with.

The ghost riders brought Castiel and Dean back to William, just outside of town to avoid being seen.

“Thanks,” Castiel said. The prospector nodded, both at Castiel and at Dean, before he lead his troupe out and back into the desert. It wasn’t long before they disappeared.

Castiel and Dean gathered a sleepy Sam into the Impala with them and soon they were driving off. Dean felt sick to his stomach and gripped the wheel tightly as he drove. The car was silent but for Sam’s soft snores in the backseat. As they got closer, they woke Sam and talked strategy.

“How do I kill this guy?” Dean asked.

“Well,” Castiel said, looking down at a folder her brought with him from the cave, “Once he decides he wishes to mate with you, he will transform into…” he squints down, “he will become his most desirable self.”

“So I, what? Stab him when he’s transforming?”

“No,” Castiel said. “That is when the wooing begins. He will use his looks and...and it says he has some sort of pheromone? It makes him seem more appealing.”

“Are you sure you can do this, Dean?” Sam asked.

“I’m fine,” Dean growled. “Keep reading, Cas.”

Cas nodded. “He will tell you that he loves you then. When he does that then...then you have to stab him in the heart. Any knife will do, it looks like, as long as it is dipped in angel blood. Apparently, the blood has an energy that counteracts with that of the pagan gods.”

Castiel rubbed his eyes, pushing the folder away. “And then it’ll be over.”

And then it would be over. Thank fucking god.

They pulled up to a large building marked by a dark purple sign with a dancing “Welcome to the Midnight Visitor” blinking in front of it under the bright mid-day Arizona sun.“How the hell are we supposed to find out where he is?”

Sam pointed between Cas and Dean in front of them at a man, a bellboy, who was standing at the door. As if on cue, his eyes flashed black. “I have a feeling that guy would be more than happy to bring you there himself.”

Dean nodded, pulling off his seat belt and fingering gently at the stupid bandana, tucked neatly into his back pocket, that got him in this whole mess.

“Okay,” Dean took a deep breath. “So I just have to woo an old, gay sex god, not jump his bones and stab him in the heart, right?”

“We’ll be staking out the place, and we’ve got our phones on us,” Sam’s hand rested on Dean’s shoulder, squeezing briefly.

Dean nodded and was about to go when another hand reached out. He glanced over at Cas, who wasn’t looking directly at him. Cas’s hand was warm and he remembered the way it touched his face, his waist. With his other hand, Castiel pulled out a knife.

“I,” Castiel cleared his throat, “I seasoned it for you.”

Dean blinked then slowly nodded one more time, took the knife, and got out of the car.

He felt around for the bandana again and tucked the knife under his waistband. The knife was small and easily hidden from view. It would make the killing stroke harder for sure, but it would make sneaking the knife in about ten times easier.

Strolling by the time he reached the hotel, he yanked at the bell boy’s hat. “Hey there,” he said, cheerfully.

The bell boy did not seem very happy about that, immediately his eyes going black. “Uh uh uh!” Dean chided with a tsking noise. He took out his bandana and waved it in front of the demon, and it was as if something clicked in the demon’s small mind. “There ya’ go.”

Dean was escorted to an elevator and was let out on the top floor. To his surprise, there was a party going on when he walked in like it wasn’t one o’clock in the afternoon. He was a little less surprised once seeing the party—the windows blackened so that the neon pulsing lights brought a real club feel to the room and there was even a fog machine— that it was entirely occupied by men in different states of undress.

“Isn’t this kind of tacky?” Dean asked. The irritable bellboy shrugged, shoved Dean into the throng of glittery gyrators, as the elevator doors shut.

He managed to get out of the conga line, to the very apparent disappointment of the sparkly Native American chief who was now pouting in the middle of the dance floor. Dean scanned the room but didn’t see anything that looked like a god anywhere.

Dean did manage to find the bar, but thought it might be an error in judgement—considering what he was going to be up against soon, unless he never found the guy—to drink anything stronger than soda. Though, to be honest, he could probably go for a Jack Daniels or seven.

“Hey there.”

The man before Dean was stunning: gorgeous blonde hair, tall, dressed in an understated but fashionable pair of slacks and a blue button up. Even in the dim lights of the makeshift club, Dean could see the man had bright white teeth and a smooth, even tan.

Damn.

“Hey,” Dean said, leaning against the bar. He glanced around. “How did you end up here?”

The man laughed, leaning in to shout in Dean’s ear over the music. “Same as any of us, I guess. Got an invitation in the mail saying that I got a free paid vacation day to stay here: pool, spa, bar all free. So, you know, I guess we wanted to check it out, right?”

Dean laughed, trying to make it sound real. “Huh, yeah I guess so.”

Was this the dude? It didn’t seem like it was the dude, but seriously any of these guys could be a god and Dean would have absolutely no clue.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Dean blinked, looking back at the hunky blonde. “Uh, what?”

Even the man’s laugh was like honey, which Dean could easily see himself licking off of his golden skin. He shouted, “A drink! It’s...it’s a joke. Cause it’s an open bar.”

“Oh,” Dean was an idiot. “Sorry, man. I’m not drinking yet!”

The man laughed, and he was really a good looking guy. Really good looking. And apparently really—what was the word? Chill? Dude probably wasn’t the god, so he probably should go and see where this stupid sex god was, but he also really liked….liked, uh,  “Hey! What’s your name?”  

The man leaned in. He smelled like linen, a fresh smell that made Dean’s head feel a little light. “Jason.”

“Dean,” Dean shouted back. They were standing very close, suddenly and Dean was totally okay with that. He was slightly wary, knowing that he needed to stay sharp in case this really was the sex god.

Granted, the sex god was supposed to be an old Asian dude, so he was probably fine.

The man smiled again and Dean’s heart fluttered just a little bit. It wasn’t quite like it was with Cas, where his arms tingled and his cheeks bloomed with a flush, but it was nice.

And the thing with Cas was all in his stupid head so it didn’t really matter anyway.

“Do you wanna dance?” Jason was shouting as a song that Dean didn’t know (since he didn’t know any music that didn’t have a mullet phase at some point) thumped out of the many speakers in the room.

And Dean didn’t really want to dance, he wasn’t much of a dancing kind of guy, but he needed to find this sex god and he needed to do it quickly or else the guy would probably get away and the world would end just on fucking principle.

Best way to find sex, Dean knew from experience, was to be squirming on the dance floor with everyone else. It was just fortunate that he had some sick dance moves.

Dean mentally assured himself that Jason’s hearty, and unfairly attractive laughter had nothing to do with Dean’s inability to understand the mechanics of the “Cupid Shuffle.”

Jason, however, was great at dancing. His body glided to each beat as if he was made for the dance floor. Dean tried keeping up, but it was obvious this man was leagues above his own awkward two step.

“Hey,” Dean shouted over the music. Jason glanced at Dean then stopped his dancing to lean in. “Hey...you wouldn’t happen to be a sex god would you?”

Jason stood back up, surprised. He stared at Dean for a second, then leaned in, “I’ve been told.” Dean’s eyes widened and Jason winked and soon they were back to shuffling.

That didn’t really answer Dean’s question, not his one about whether this guy was going to enslave the world into a barren wasteland, but the response was definitely filed away for future use.

You know, if Jason wasn’t actually a crazy, murderous rabbit deity.

But the music calmed down and the next song was slow. Soon the dance floor was swaying with the soft, light steps of sparkly gay men.

Jason’s hand swept over Dean’s arm, gentle and soft and it made Dean smile for a moment. It was a request, a gesture, and Dean could definitely appreciate it. So, as he slid close to Jason, putting his hands around the man’s muscular waist and feeling his pulse underneath his fitted shirt, Dean thought that maybe the sex god would wait just a couple minutes before Dean had to do anything. It was nice to be held, Dean thought (though he would never tell anyone that or else he’d probably die of mortification).

As they floated amongst the other twinkling dudes on the dance floor, Dean realized he actually recognized the song. “Really? They have a Heart song?”

Jason shrugged. “I guess so.” As a slow remixed, almost jazzy rendition of “Magic Man” swept over the crowd, Jason gently urged Dean closer. Their bodies glided together, pleasant and comfortable. Halfheartedly, Dean looked around the dance floor but found no To Wong Foos (or whatever his name was) anywhere.

He did, however, find the tall gorgeous blonde’s lips with his own and that was kinda awesome. It was a short kiss, but sweet.

The music, as if hearing Dean’s stuttering heartbeat, paused.

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice said behind Dean. “But I do believe it’s my turn.”

Dean blinked. He turned around. “Cas?”

His voice was drowned out in the flood of a sudden heavy bass. But it was, standing right in front of him, his blue eyes glinting in the dancing lights and his smile, so unusual and usually so grave, opening his face. He looked decades younger, softer, yet something about the old way that Castiel’s eyes would twitch slightly at the corners, yes that was there.

It was Cas. What the hell was he doing up here?

“Oh.” That was Jason, who was standing forgotten in Dean’s arms. “Well, we were sort of in the middle of something.”

Dean laughed, covering up for his momentary lapse that the room held anything other than the angel and himself by wrapping his arm more fully around the blonde man. “Uh, yeah, dude. I’m kind of busy at the moment.” He glanced at Jason, slightly guilty that he was supposed to be busy looking for the Asian dude and was, instead, dancing with this hot guy. But the wicked grin the blonde man sent back was enough to make Dean’s guilt melt a little.

“Well then,” Castiel said, his eyes still focused entirely on Dean. “How about just one dance then. Dean?”

Maybe something had gone wrong? As much as Dean wanted to stay here, stay with Jason and squirm against him, he had to stay focused. Castiel had probably sensed that Dean was getting off track and came in to point him back in the right direction.

And, all right, that sort of pissed him off. He was gonna give Cas a dressing down then he was going to find this stupid sex god and then maybe, if he was lucky, find Jason and eat his face.

“Dean,” Castiel said. “One dance?”

Dean sighed, feeling a bit like a martyr but, considering this whole situation maybe that wasn’t quite so far off. Better than the other thing he felt like, starting with a “P” and ending with a “-rostitute.”

Except he wasn’t getting money and he could very well end up dooming the world to infertility.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said. Castiel’s smile, surely put on for show so Jason would leave them alone, was brilliant and gleamed in the dark room.

Castiel took Dean’s hand and dragged him away. The music changed to something with a heavy beat, sultry and low as the lights changed from purple to crimson and the whole room seemed to double in tense energy.

And Dean expected Castiel to take him to the side, to yell at him about getting distracted and not focusing on the mission and being a damn idiot. What he did not expect was Castiel to take Dean’s hand just as he was about to defend himself against any possible chastisements and bring his arms to wrap snugly around the angel’s waist.

“Woah!” Dean yelped. He glanced around. “What are you doing?”

Castiel’s gaze met Dean’s, a wicked look in his eye. “It’s time to show you how to dance, Dean.” Castiel adjusted Dean’s legs so that they were fit perfectly against his own, his thigh pressed against the angel’s groin. A flurry of sensation pulsed from Dean’s pants to the top of his head as Castiel, with a guiding hand, helped Dean grind against him to the beat of the thumping song.

Dean didn’t really understand how this was supposed to be helping him find the god, but it felt good so he allowed for the momentary distraction. Their upper bodies moved closer as they danced.

“Dude, are you wearing a silk shirt?” Dean asked when he gripped Castiel’s arms and felt the satin smooth material under his fingertips. The shirt was black, a fact he’d noticed earlier, but glimmered softly in the flashing lights and made him realize just how fucking alluring Castiel was, even when he wasn’t trying.

He never even stood a chance, did he?

Castiel laughed. “Do you like it, Dean?”

Dean swallowed. “Yeah, it’s okay I guess.” He rubbed his fingers over the silk, amazed that the smooth material seemed warmed both by Castiel’s flushed skin and by Dean’s tentative fingers. The song went on and Dean felt himself getting hard and he knew he needed to get away from Cas or else he’d forget why he was here and that was kind of against the whole point.

But he was stopped when Castiel leaned in and murmured into Dean’s ear. “You are so incredibly attractive.” The angel’s fingers brushed against Dean’s shirt, which was knit and soft but nothing like Castiel’s outfit.

Dean’s heart thumped in his chest and he stepped back. “Come on, man. Stop messing with me.”

“And modest,” Cas added, pulling Dean back, and Dean thought he must be crazy because Dean was many things but modest wasn’t one of them.

Dean laughed but Castiel’s eyes were dancing over his throat, his arms, his chest.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked, but the music must have been too loud or the bass too strong because Castiel didn’t respond, only stared at him with eyes that could only describe as hungry.

Dean bit his lip to try to keep the squeaking feeling from marshalling out of his throat, which Castiel only served to make worse as he watched Dean's mouth. What the hell? Was the guy _still_ testing him?

The song ended and Dean was about to part ways, finished with whatever this check in was and ready to find the sex god when Castiel pulled him close.

“Listen can, can this wait? I’ve got to—.”

“Don’t you want to stay here? Stay with me?” Castiel asked, quirking his head to the side. Dean froze, his eyes widened. There was no way this was happening, not a chance that Castiel was standing in front of him saying these words so desperately. Castiel leaned forward, his tongue tracing Dean’s ear making him shiver. “Don’t you want me, Dean?”

Before Dean could answer, however, Castiel was standing in Dean’s space, pressing up with his full length fitted against him. Hands, those soft and perfect hands, pushed against Dean’s shoulders and drifted down his arms to gently hold his wrists.

Castiel’s mouth was hot as it floated by his mouth, producing a heat like a fever as it pressed softly against Dean who could feel every butterfly in the world trying to burst from his sternum.

Dean’s eyes fluttered shut as the lips moved against his own, so incredibly warm and gentle and smooth, but almost as soon as Dean was able to step into the kiss and reciprocate, Castiel pulled back.

Castiel murmured. “No, it cannot wait.”

He stepped away from Dean who stood somewhat stunned in the aftermath. Okay, so maybe he could put the search on hold for a second.

“All right,” Dean said, and then the angel was tugging him, his grip still loose on his wrist.

Castiel lead Dean away from the dance floor and Dean could feel their pulses dancing together as they dodged many sparkling couples on their way to the back of the room. It looked like Castiel had found a secret entrance, which explained how he got there, because when they reached the back wall, Castiel pushed forward into one of the panels.

The wall panel opened and the two men slid inside. The room was quiet but dark, and after being the other space filled with flashing lights, Dean could hardly see in front of his face let alone further into the room.

“Dude, what are you—” Dean said, as he started to shake off Castiel’s hand. However neither were his words finished nor his hand relinquished.

Instead, his mouth was assaulted with hot angel tongue as Castiel again pressed himself flush against Dean’s body. Like an exposed wire, sparks of electricity surged through his veins—to his fingertips, his lips, his cock—and no matter how much closer Dean would get to Castiel, it was like he couldn’t get enough. Air no longer seemed nearly as important as gripping those hips and pulling them to his own.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas whispered, pulling his lips away only to brush against his ear, “Yes.”

Dean groaned and grabbed Castiel’s chin, pulled his face down and clashed lips and teeth together in a painful but wonderful kiss.

Dean felt so hot, so completely blown only by the angel’s lips against his own and he needed more of Cas, needed him like he’d needed no one else in his entire life.

But he had to remember the mission, so he pulled back and held Castiel away from him so he could breathe. “Dude, we can’t do this right now.”

Castiel growled, but Dean held him firmly away. “Why not?”

“Because I sort of have to offer myself up to a god, remember?” Dean said, still panting but getting himself under some control. He looked at Castiel properly. He’d changed his clothes, probably to fit in better to the club. “You know, I didn’t know you had a silk shirt. And...are these pants leather?”

“There are many things you don’t know about me, Dean Winchester,” Castiel said, and Dean’s eyes met with his and he thought that he’d never seen those blue eyes blaze with such fire. “But I promise to give you anything you want, just please don’t leave.”

Castiel’s voice was needy and Dean had no idea what was into him but, “You know I have to do this.” Dean murmured as Castiel slid closer to him. “I have to find him or else the whole world will end.”

Castiel hummed, obviously thinking about what Dean was saying. “Will the world end in ten minutes?”

Dean blinked. “What?”

“Stay in this room,” Castiel said, again pressed against Dean with the draping silk shirt and hot leather trousers, “for ten more minutes. Then you can go save the world.”

Castiel was making some sound arguments.

“Ten minutes?” Dean asked, voice rough with growing arousal. “Aren’t you presuming just a little?”

Castiel grinned, and it was such a wicked grin that he thought of the time Castiel was with Meg and how she brought him into the world of sex and warm bodies that Dean never had the chance, never had the opportunity to give the angel.

Not that that he ever thought about doing that. Not that...oh, who was he kidding?

And now Castiel was begging for it, draping himself all over Dean. He wanted Dean, and not just for the mission, not just for some task, but really wanted him.

“I know.” Castiel’s hands were all over Dean, hands squeezing and kneading his biceps with tender affection, but eyes boring into Dean’s in a way that only could be described as totally naughty. “I thought I could give us the extra five minutes to cuddle.”

Huh?

With a strength that Dean usually forgot the little hot nerd angel had in him, Castiel turned Dean around and shoved him into the middle of the room. The back of Dean’s knees hit something soft, smooth, and he realized that he was falling unto a massive bed bedecked in red silk sheets.

“Cas?” Dean whispered, voice caught in his throat and probably sounding like nothing more than a croak. Castiel stepped forward, his eyes caught by the light from the window, which was surprisingly soft since it was definitely still morning outside. The damn angel’s eyes were glowing, like neon lights as he walked, soundless and smooth like a cat who caught his prey.

“Oh how I love you in red.”

The angel’s gritty voice trickled heat straight up from Dean’s toes to his cock and he shifted on the bed, the silken sheets slipping underneath him cool and pleasant under his bare arms.

“Yeah?” Dean whimpered. “What else do you like?”

“Hm,” Castiel said, now standing over the bed, hands stroking the sheets and coming close to Dean’s feet. Dean held his breath as the angel lifted a leather clad leg on the bed and slowly brought his other leg on the bed too.

Castiel’s hand stroked Dean’s calf, fingernails grazing over Dean’s jeans and up his leg. “I love your name. Dean.”

“You do?” Dean whispered.

Castiel slid between Dean’s opened yet still clothed legs,and mouthed up Dean’s thigh. Finally Castiel found Dean’s cock where it was bulging in his pants and, not even needing to look up at Dean for confirmation, he put his mouth over it. He breathed. “Dean. Mm, Dean. Dean.” His breath was hot and hearing his name sounding so wrecked on that most desirous tongue made it hard to breathe.

Dean’s verbal functions were malfunctioning so he could only manage to answer “guh,” in return.

Castiel’s head finally rose and he continued his trek up to Dean’s face, his hand replacing his mouth and gently kneading at his groin through the pants, occasionally going lower to tantalize his tender thighs.

Cas’s mouth found Dean’s neck, and he curled his head down to nibble the nape with tender, practiced licks.  “I loved how you looked for me,” he said between sucks, “You were dancing with that other man, kissing him, yet still you were distracted. Still you were looking.”

“For the god,” Dean muttered, reminding Cas weakly what he was supposed to be doing, but also bringing the man closer to his own body by gripping his shirt in his desperate fingers.

Castiel hummed. “For me,” he said, determined, and Dean decided to let it go.

“For you,” he whispered. Castiel lifted his head, smiling. “Cas, please, I want you so much.”

Castiel continued from where he left off, nipping at Dean’s clavicle and licking it with the flat of his burning tongue.

Castiel suddenly laughed, soft and mild but bubbling with a joy that Dean could feel on his own pulse. “I just, I didn’t know I could feel like this again.”

Dean laughed. “Feel what? Horny?” His hand kneaded into Castiel’s back, and he was rewarded with a pleasured groan.

“Love,” Castiel murmured. The neon light eyes found Deans and with words soft and trembling, Castiel said, “Dean, I am in love with you.”

And Dean’s heart stuttered.

“You what?” he asked, his pulse so load it rushed in his ears.

“I know,” Castiel said, serious and earnest and...and…

Wait.

Castiel hated the color red.

Castiel wouldn’t have taken Dean away from his mission.

Castiel wouldn’t have been happy Dean was looking for him if there was a sex god apocalypse on the rise.

Castiel wouldn’t change his fucking shirt or wear fucking leather trousers. Hell, he barely changed his outfit...ever.

Dean licked his lips, as arousal and delight and sudden complete awareness filled his eyes and his throat.

He looked into Castiel’s blue eyes, so warm and so incredibly, indelibly linked with his own.

Castiel never looked at him like that.

And he probably never would.

“Dean?”

Dean gasped as if his heart was about to cave in and tried to get air into his lungs. Do not forget the goal.

“Yeah, hey,” Dean said his voice soft, his hand caressing Castiel’s arm, his voice nothing but a whisper. “Hey do that thing again,” he murmured.

Castiel—not Castiel—seemed none the wiser to Dean’s realization, his eyes lighting up with a sinful glee.

“Of course,” he murmured. He bent back down. Dean stroked his back and could feel tears involuntarily pouring from his eyes as he reached behind him. He plucked his knife out of his pocket and wrapped his arms around the sex god.

And it was all so sad. It was all so terrible.

“Hey,” Dean said, his voice choked on his tears as he was about to stab someone, probably the only person besides Sam on this world that would ever love him and certainly the only one who would stare at him with such immediate, complete affection.

The god looked up and saw Dean’s tears, and immediately drew his eyebrows together in concern. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

Dean took a deep breath, and hated how it rattled in his chest. “I’m so, so sorry,” he whispered.

“Wha—?” Dean pushed the man over and plunged his knife into his chest.

The god’s eyes flashed wide, surprised.

Then he looked at the knife which, coated in the blood of an angel, began to illuminate his chest. Dean saw his blood seep out and glow underneath his skin as his spirit warred with the tainted blade.

“Dean? Dean why?”

And blue eyes turned to yellow turned to brown but still looked so sad, so pained and Dean didn’t dare look away.

“Because you killed innocent people,” Dean said grunted, turning the knife even as tears leaked unwarranted and trickled down his cheek. “And I can’t let you destroy the world.”

The god stared at Dean, his heart pulsing blood harder out of the wound as he tried to gasp for air.

“But I chose you,” the god whispered. Dean nodded pulling out the red bandana.

“I know, because of the scarf,” Dean murmured back, putting the kerchief in the god’s hand, even as he watched it changing into something softer, something less angular and so not Castiel that Dean could almost laugh if there wasn’t a rock sitting in his chest.

But the god was shaking his head. “I chose you because you seemed so lonely.” The god coughed as blood oozed from his lips. “You are so lost and in love and completely alone.” The god laughed, an awful self-depreciating sound, “Something I know well.”

Dean licked his lips. “I’m sorry this had to happen,” he said, his throat choked like it was filled with sand.

“I’m sorry you must be alone, Dean Winchester,” the god murmured.

Then there was no more. Dean watched the spirit leave the god’s body, leaving a small frightened body of not an old but a young, handsome Fujing man. He had been a soldier. He had been in love and he had died for it.

Again.

\-----

According to Sam, the demons that once were guarding the hotel ran away as soon as Dean completed his mission and stabbed Tu Er Shen.

“The ghost cowboys showed up as well,” Sam said, a gleam of wonder in his eyes, “They were awesome.”

Dean smiled, although he wasn't quite sure if the smile reached his eyes just yet. After he killed Tu Er Shen, he found it surprisingly easy to get out of the hotel—most likely because the demons guarding it were now scattered to the wind or pierced with bullets from the phantom horsemen. There was still dancing in the main room, men of all kinds squirming and wiggling to something loud and thumping.

Dean shoved past them and found the stairs to the emergency exit, scaling those and landing back outside.

Silently, he slid into the Impala's passenger seat and stared out the window, letting Sam talk for a little bit.

He was fine, really he was.

“Hey Dean? You all right?”

Dean lifted his head from his hand, glancing at Sam. Sam, as usual, looked concerned. Cas was watching, too, but Dean felt a surge of pain prod at his heart when he looked at the angel just a little too long so he stared back out the window.

“I'm fine,” he muttered. “We should probably drop off Cas, though.”

Cas with his Grand Canyon hideaway where he never called, never bothered to let Dean know he was all right. Because he didn't care. He was the person that Dean most desired, so much so that the stupid, sad gay bunny god actually looked and sounded and fucking felt like Castiel.

Yet, Castiel only touched him if it meant it would save the world; would rather touch a fuckin' demon then bother with some stupid half-human, half-dunderhead like Dean.

“Oh.” That was Sam. “Actually, Cas was gonna come with us back to the bunker. Thought he might be able to help us generate some material about angels for the archives, since until this past decade no one, including the Men of Letters, really believed that angels existed.”

Dean nodded, leaning his head back against the window.

“If that's amenable to you, that is,” Castiel added and Dean could feel the both of them staring and, really, Dean found it difficult even when he wasn't emotionally shattered to say no to them.

Not that he would. Christ, he was really just pathetic.

Dean would get over this. It was just another file of information that Dean was going to hide, maybe burn, in his mind.

This infatuation would, it _had_ to, fade. Sure, it hadn't for Lisa or Cassie, both of whom still caused a slight ache when Dean thought about them too long.

But Cas was a dude and maybe it didn't sting so much when it was just a guy.

Granted, it was also just a guy who was still his best friend—no matter how shitty the angel was at remembering that sometimes—that would be living with them for the foreseeable future. A fact which, although somewhat tormenting, made his stupid heart flutter with pleasure.

Which was probably not a great sign, to be completely honest.

And although Dean could tell neither Sam nor Castiel believed that he was actually okay, they left him alone. They drove for six straight hours before Dean forced Sam to pull over so that he could drive. He drove through the night as the desert sand and open road slowly eased into grassy plains and trees as they inched across the continent back to their bunker.

The car was quiet and Sammy, though he would later deny he did so, snored in the passenger seat.

“Dean.”

Dean glanced into the rear view mirror. Castiel leaning over the front seat, hunched. His hands—hands that Dean knew remarkably well—loosely held the leather of the seat in front of him, caressing it. Dean looked away, back at the road.

“Yeah, Cas?”

Castiel didn't respond immediately, and Dean adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. He fought the urge to look back in the mirror and cracked his neck as the silence grew more and more uncomfortable.

Dean was about to prompt the angel again and cleared his throat.

“Did something happen in there?”

Dean paused. Castiel's question was quiet, concerned. If Dean was brave enough, he'd look back in the rear view mirror and maybe even see worry in Castiel's cerulean eyes, the confused crinkle of his brow, but he didn't dare.

Dean laughed. “I went in with demon boy, I found the sex god and I did my job.”

“Your job,” Castiel said in that way, that slightly miffed and entirely too superior way that usually made Dean want to slap the guy (this time was no exception), “was to make this sex god, a powerful god who could have destroyed the entire human race, fall in love with you.”

“Yeah?” Dean said, knuckles pale where he held the wheel maybe a bit too tightly.

“Dean you were only in there maybe thirty minutes at most,” Castiel said, sounding not surprised, not impressed, but incredulous.

“Yeah well, what can I say?” Dean shrugged, a smirk plastered on his face, “Dean Winchester charm is as lethal as it is irresistible.”

Except to one douche bag angel with nice hair and an impressive jawline. Whatever.

“Well, did you do as we practiced?” Castiel mussed his hair with a frustrated hand. “Did you resist him? Dean there are thousands of men who have easily fallen under the spell of Tu Er Shen. The likelihood that you were going to be able to get him to confess to you, I mean I know we said you were ready but there was such a risk—.”

“Cas,” Dean said, his heart pummeling a painful rhythm straight to his gut. “Dude. Just...that's enough okay. I guess I got lucky. It happens, sometimes.”

Castiel sat back in his seat.

“It just doesn't make sense.” Castiel sighed, leaning against the window on the passenger side and when Dean risked a glance back in the mirror, the angel looked perplexed, eyes squinting into the darkening sky.

“Is it that impossible to imagine someone falling in love with me, Cas?”

Dean didn’t really mean to ask the question, but rather it fell out as if pushed by his heart which was so swollen and tired from this whole ordeal.

He thought Castiel wasn’t going to respond when the angel said, his voice even quieter, “No, Dean, it’s not impossible.”

Dean shook his head. Cas probably wanted to add, “but it’s improbable,” or some shit but was keeping quiet, which was good frankly because Dean was exhausted.

“He's gone, Cas,” Dean sighed. “That's all that matters.”

Castiel hummed. Dean looked back at the road. They drove the rest of the way in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my editor, Deeleybopper, who always has lovely ideas and cares about my stories as much as I do. Also, a thank you is in order for JK Rowling who inspired the OC I created in this chapter with her plant loving witches.

A month later, Dean was alone.

That is to say, he was nearly alone. He was trapped in a warehouse just outside of Seattle, Washington, bound by an enchanted vine to the cement floor.

And this whole thing was meant to be a quick job. Damn it.

”Come back here, you stupid bitch!” he shouted into the empty warehouse where the witch he'd been hunting—some raging old crone named Helga—had dragged him.

Dean really hated witches.

The witch was no longer there. Apparently she had to “confer with her plants” to figure out what they should do with him.

Great, he thought, now his life was up to a goddamn daffodil. How freakin' typical.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey is anybody out there?”

Puddles around him pinged and plopped with trickling raindrops that fell from the roof many stories above the ground.  It was raining outside, making this the fourth straight day of unrelentingly cold showers. Apparently, shitty weather was super typical in Washington and how people could stand living in it all the time Dean had no freakin' clue.

The big-ass plant that was binding Dean's hands together tightened further and he groaned, bones in his wrists rubbing together uncomfortably.

“Damn it,” he grunted. His hands were bound and he'd been forced to his knees, his ankles also bound behind him. He licked his lip, which was busted and dripping blood down his chin and unto his shirt.

And he liked the shirt, too. This stupid witch was ruining everything. And she would probably end up killing him, too.

Dean tried focusing on his breathing, getting his emotions and his anger under control so he could figure out a way out of here. The cold water soaked into his jeans where he knelt, his skin rubbed raw from squirming.

His knees went through phases of pain, tingling and numbness as hours ticked on. He could see through the small slats in the ceiling that the sky was growing dim quickly but the rain continued to come down, causing the warehouse roof to ring out in a metallic harmony. It might have been pleasant if Dean wasn't going to surely die in the next couple hours at the hands (vines? leaves?) of a house plant.

He was so freakin' mad he couldn't even stand it.

The doors opened just as all light began fading from the sky. They let in a pool of bright white light and Dean hissed at the sudden onslaught to his eyes.

“Jeez, warn a guy!” he barked.

“Oh sorry,” the witch, Helga, said. She sounded and looked like a sweet old granny, but Dean knew enough to see the crawling maggoty heart underneath. “I'll have to remember to warn the next scoundrel who decides to go into my house to steal my most prized petunia.”

“I told you!” Dean's voice felt like sandpaper in his throat, but hurt nothing like his arms and legs as the plants squeezed in retaliation to his volume. “I didn't come to steal your stupid petunia.”

“That's not what your filthy red hands told me! And you nearly scared her to death, you terrible man.”

Dean rolled his eyes. Great, he scared a plant. All the world should bow and tremble.

“Well, I promise that I won't do it again, okay? I wasn't there for the freakin' plant. I was trying to figure out where the hex bag came from.”

“Hex bag?” Helga asked, for the first time sounding like she might actually be listening to Dean and not just steamrolling over him in her pique of floral protest. “I don't use hex bags.”

“Yeah? I might have guessed,” Dean spat and paid for it when the plants tightened further and with a whimper he felt one of his bones snap in his wrist.

“Rudeness will not help you, boy,” Helga hissed. She stepped closer to him and lifted his chin with one cold, chubby finger. “What hex bag?”

“The hex bag that set the hornets over to the Robertsons',” Dean explained, panting as his vision started fading out at the pain in his wrist. “It used one of your plants in order for it to work.”

“Well I didn't make the bag,” Helga said shaking her head. “I don't use hex bags. I only use—“

“Plants! Yeah I get it, God!” Dean shouted and basically expected it when the plant holding his ankles pulled backwards and sent his face flat into the floor. “Ugh.”

Helga didn't respond directly to him, instead muttering to herself. “Angela. It must be. But why...” she cleared her throat. “I will see to the bottom of this.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever” Dean muttered, turning his head and spitting out the blood the force of hitting the ground had scraped from his cheeks.

“But first I must deal with you.” Helga's eyes narrowed and with a flick of her hand, Dean went surging up into the air, the plant now pulling him in four different directions from his wrists and his ankles. The pain from his wrists—damn, he must have broken both of them—caused his vision to fizzle around the edges. The only thing that stopped him from crying out was his clenched jaw, teeth biting nearly through his lower lip.  He could feel the wounds on his mouth and in his cheeks ooze and this was seriously not how he wanted to go.

“But I didn't do anything,” Dean whimpered, his sight blurring and weaving as he floated above the concrete floor nothing holding him up but a massive vine and the power of a witch with a misplaced grudge.

“I have spoken with my council,” Helga said, and Dean had to fight rolling his eyes at the thought of this crazy woman chatting with a couple daisies saying “Hm, shall we kill the boy or shall we use him as fertilizer?” She continued speaking, “And we have all agreed that we need to make an example of you.”

“Why?” Dean said. “What example? Don't touch a person's plant or else you'll be fucking killed?”

“Hm,” Helga said. “Well, I don't know about the profanity. But I like the rest of it.”

“It was just a stupid flower!” Dean knew saying this was his death, but he was dying anyway and he only had a few seconds left so. “It is a dumb, stupid, piece of shit flower and I hope it dies with the frost.”

As Helga began to screech, Dean shut his eyes and he felt the vines tighten even further and begin pulling his arms and legs apart.

“Oh, you mean this plant?”

The pulling stopped, suddenly. Dean opened his eyes and Helga turned around.

Dean wasn't imagining it. There was Sammy. And he was holding, wouldn't you know it, the petunia that Dean had been accused of trying to steal for himself.

“Seriously?” Dean asked, and Helga looked at him. “You gave me all this shit about trying to steal it and you didn't think to lock it up?”

“Dean, shut up,” Sam said, looking at him with a particularly bitchy bitch face that would usually make Dean punch his brother in his arm, but quietened him in face of his possible rescuing. “Anyway, as I was saying.”

Sam took the plant and threw it to the ground. The witch screeched and it was a terrible, practically demonic sound as Sam took out from behind him a—holy shit—a flamethrower.

“Where the hell'd you get that?” Dean asked, eyes wide and impressed.

“Etsy,” Sam grunted and set fire to the plant.

Helga was beyond grief, beyond screams as she slowly began to melt along with her flaming petunia. The sight was horrendous and the smells that rose up to invade Dean's nostrils were just nasty.

The only thing that felt worse, perhaps, was the vines finally relinquishing Dean. His stomach lurched as he fell, at once falling fast—so fast, so fast, _oh god_ —and in slow motion, like each second was an hour, each heartbeat a deadly beat of the drum signalling the end of his life. He was nearly three stories up in the air. There was no way he would survive.

Well, unless an angel slowed his fall and caught him. Which, you know, was what happened. Some of the conveniences of having an angel around, Dean supposed.

Castiel was warm, like he always was, like a furnace of angelic glory.

“Dean? Dean are you all right?” Castiel asked, lowering Dean to the ground, but holding his upper body in his arms.

It felt nice. Not that Dean would ever say that.

“Dandy,” he grumbled, hissing when Castiel jostled his wrist to get him settled. “Well, mostly.”

“Dean,” Castiel grunted and Dean would not have looked at him, not dared to do so if a gentle finger hadn't pushed against Dean's cheek—the side that was not currently bleeding profusely—so that Dean's eyes would meet his.

Castiel pulled his hand away, running fingers down Dean's right arm to feel for injury. “Why do you keep doing this?”

“What? My job?” Dean asked, coughing as blood from his cut cheek went down the wrong tube. Damn it, that shit hurt.

“Running away.” Castiel was touching him so gently, when he found the injured spot white light pulsed out of his hand and coaxed Dean's bones to mend themselves. Dean winced, his wrists tender, but sighed in relief as they mended. “This is the fourth time in as many weeks that Sam and I have had to find you. Why?”

Dean stayed silent, Castiel's eyes glancing over his wounds and occasionally coming back to connect with his gaze. “I didn't think it was going to be a big deal,” Dean admitted.

“You're being reckless,” Castiel chided and Dean rolled his eyes. Yeah, that was more like it.

“I'm being a hunter, Cas,” Dean said. “I hunt things. It's sort of my shtick.”

“Isn't it also your 'shtick' to bring Sam along? Or...or anyone. Either of us. Someone else. Whatever, you bring back-up to these things, Dean.” Castiel's stuttering diatribe was grating on Dean's nerves.

“What does it matter to you?” Dean felt the words ripping from him, somewhere from within his gut that had been festering for the past month, since the hotel, since the day in the Grand Canyon.

Castiel frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I'm doing my job, Cas. Just as much as you. I'm...I'm completing a mission, okay? That's it.” Dean looked away as Castiel healed his other wrist. He tried to push out of Castiel's grip but was stopped by strong hands, gripping him to stay put.

“Dean, stop. Please, stop.” Dean stilled at those words. “Dean you're going to kill yourself, going like this.”

Sam came over then, after making sure Helga was nothing but mush on the floor, and silently they lifted Dean so that one arm would drape around Castiel's shoulders and Dean could also grab at Sam's arm if he needed the extra balance since his brother was about a foot too tall to be of any use otherwise.

The job was supposed to be easy: some hexbag-carrying windbags causing trouble; an in and out sort of thing. Dean had needed it. He’d needed the task, the small amount of danger, the fulfillment of ganking evil mofos.

Because after a month of sitting in the same bunker as Castiel—breathing the same air and smiling the same sad smiles and knowing that the angel was watching him, trying to puzzle him out— Dean couldn't take it anymore.

“We've gotta get the other witch,” Dean said, his speech slightly impeded by his injured mouth, as they lay him down in the back seat. Castiel, while once again an angel, was unable to completely heal Dean in one go considering that his grace wasn't what it once was and Dean figured he'd used a ton of his mojo just getting him, Sam, and the Impala to the warehouse. As Dean's body started going into shock, he could feel his ribs were sore against his lungs, and his face felt like it was the size of a basketball.

“I called Garth,” Sam said. “He said he knew some guys in the area. They'll handle it.”

“I had it covered,” Dean grunted, but neither Castiel nor Sam bothered to say otherwise. Even Dean didn't really believe it so he lay back and shut his eyes.

The drive home was silent. Sam was pulling his “I am not speaking to Dean because I think he's being a complete moron” routine and Castiel wouldn't stop staring at him. Dean felt like he was a bottle rocket, shaken up and ready to blow up into the sky.

Sam and Castiel deposited Dean in his room and he sank gratefully into his bed. He stank and he could feel the grime of the warehouse floor all over his face and hands, but for a long while he just sprawled on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

He wondered briefly if Sam and Castiel were talking about him somewhere. Maybe they were in the archives, where Dean had been unceremoniously banned ever since his organization mishap, only allowed inside to help with cases. It was where his brother and the angel spent most of their time. In fact, if Dean hadn't been so sure that he was avoiding Cas, he would have sworn that the same could be said of the angel.

When Castiel wasn't staring at him, watching him with a careful eye, he was gone. Sometimes he was working in the library where Sam said he was adding angel information to the archives.

Other times, he was just out. He would be gone hours, days at a time. And that was something Dean was used to, something he'd expected to happen. He just didn't expect that the angel would keep coming back.

Dean was bedridden for a day as his muscles, completely exhausted and worn from being trapped kneeling on the floor a whole day, burned and screamed at him with every tiny movement. When he took his first shower after the plant incident he felt like he was going to die. Castiel had been standing outside the bathroom where Dean was whimpering and had silently continued the healing he'd begun back at the warehouse.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean murmured when Castiel finished, the swelling on Dean's face gone and he could move his jaw normally again.

Castiel cocked his head to the side, drawing his eyebrows together. “Of course.” If Dean hadn’t known better, he would have thought the angel sounded sad, confused.

But he did. Know better, that is.

Of course, that didn’t mean he knew why when Castiel did touch him—to check Dean’s already healed wrists or his other wounds that seemed stubborn against the angel’s touch—it was with a care that could only be considered tender. Castiel held him like he was a paper doll, breakable, but also like he didn’t really want to let go, his fingertips lingering on Dean’s skin. All at once, like he couldn’t figure out how to handle Dean.

Not that Dean had any idea, either. Castiel had disappeared for days after that.

Dean was finally able to walk around, nearly back to normal, by the end of the week and he decided to celebrate by cleaning off all of the weapons in the lock up. Some of the weapons were easy to clean, just a quick wipe down with some gentle soap and water. Some required oil or polish. There were a couple weapons Dean had absolutely no idea how to clean, but he did his best.

Sam found him as he was cleaning a rather medieval looking number that seemed more complicated than useful.

“Hey Sammy,” Dean said when he heard his brother walk in. Sam hummed a greeting, leaning in the doorjamb and watching Dean work.

“What's that?”

Dean laughed. “No idea. Seems cool though.” Dean carefully worked around the massive spikes with a small toothbrush, removing dried on debris with origins he didn't really care to think about too hard.

Sam stood quietly but Dean could hear his big, Stanford brain whirring. After a few more strokes, Dean put the weapon aside and wiped his hands off with a nearby rag.

“What's up?”

If Dean thought that his brother was going to dance around whatever was on his mind, he was wrong. “What's up with you and Cas?”

Dean froze then laughed weakly, looking for another weapon to polish. “I don't know what you're talkin' about.”

“Bullshit.”

“What do you mean 'bullshit?’” Dean got up, taking each weapon to put them back in their cases. “I don't know what you're talkin' about. There's nothing going on with me and Cas.”

“And I'm saying bullshit.” Sam stepped away from the door. “You guys have been dancing around each other. I get that you guys are both emotionally constipated, but it's getting stupid.”

Dean shook his head. “There's nothing going on, Sam.” He drew a sword from its case, unsheathing it and checking it over for any spots or blemishes on the nearly opalescent steel. There were none.

“You're getting more and more reckless,” Sam said. “Taking on an ancient sorceress by yourself? Last week you tracked down an entire pack of vampires and, what? You were gonna try to take them alone? Are you nuts?”

“I was just tracking them, that's all.” The sword just wouldn't go into its damn case and Dean was just about to give up on it, throw it across the room, when Sam's hand caught his arm.

“And don't you see what it's doing to me? What it's doing to Cas?” Sam shook his head. “We are a team, Dean.”

“Whatever,” Dean said, lobbing the weapon on the table where it clanged loudly, falling to the floor.

“Whatever?” Sam's face, which looked like he’d sucked on a lemon, and tone were really starting to piss Dean off. “Wow, way to sound like a fifteen year old girl, Dean.”

“Well, what do you want Sam?” Dean said, turning to face him.

Sam met Dean head on. “I want you to tell me what's wrong so we can fix it and you can stop acting like an idiot!”

“What's wrong?” And something about that, Sam’s irritated scowl and the way that Castiel hadn’t even spoken to him when he came back yesterday looking worn out and so goddamned sad, made a barrier in Dean’s heart start crumbling.

Words like vomit poured from Dean's mouth without warrant of his mind, his heart bare and exposed like a wire. “What's wrong is that sometimes I wonder why I do this shit at all! What's wrong is that I can't seem to be worth more than a body to anybody! Hell, if you guys taught someone how to use a gun you could probably replace me and that would be the end of it.”

Sam blinked, confused. “Dean, what the hell are you talking about?”

“That day,” Dean barked. “At the hotel? Yeah, I wouldn't have been there—I wouldn't have done any of that shit!—if you hadn't given me the stupid bandana. That was it. And, suddenly, I was the one that had to fight off the next human apocalypse. It was up to me to kill that guy.”

“You had to, Dean,” Sam said.

“Of course I had to, and I did it,” Dean said. “What are you an idiot?”

“Then what are you mad about, Dean?” Sam asked.

“He was just a lonely dude,” Dean grunted. “I had to make this guy confess love to me and...and Sam it wasn't even hard.” He shrugged. “All I had to do was...just...I just had to talk to him, you know? Just show him that I didn't think he was some freak and he was all over me and he said he loved me. That's it.”

And Dean couldn't love him. Besides being a mass-murdering fuckhead—which, Dean couldn't really say his hands were all that clean himself— Dean couldn't ever love him, because that man had been wearing the face of Castiel. Cas, his best friend who he was so pathetically in love with, and who he could barely look at anymore.

That face which looked at him with such confused betrayal that, even though it was being worn by a stupid, murderous god, that Dean still saw it when he closed his eyes at night. Feeling that Castiel would never have for him that this god felt within seconds of meeting Dean, burning the hunter with cerulean daggers.

“And what does that have to do with Cas?”

Dean almost forgot his brother was there, so lost in his thoughts. “Oh.” He licked his lips, trying to think of an excuse. “Well Cas is an angel, you know? He wouldn’t get why...why I’m torn up about it, you know? And angels...they just don't get love like we do.”

“What do you mean?”

Dean and Sam both realized a moment too late that Castiel had walked into the room and he was staring straight at Dean.

“Dude, Cas,” Dean said, swallowing back his surprise. “You really need a bell or some—.”

“You said angels don't understand love, what do you mean?”

Castiel was angry, Dean could feel the waves of it brush against him like a gusts wind.

“I, uh,” Dean said, blinking. He hadn't really meant anything except to get Sam off his back. “Well, I mean, you know. Like, how I dated Lisa and how Sam had Jessica and...you know. You don't, you don't feel that.” Dean felt like he was floating in an abyss, falling into a black hole as he watched Castiel's stance freeze and, yeah, Dean was being harsh. “Listen, Cas—.”

Castiel turned around and stormed out of the room.

“Great,” Dean muttered. He scratched his head, staring at the doorway then looked back at Sam, who was staring at him like he was an idiot.

“Do you plan on fixing that?” Sam asked, gesturing out the door.

“Fixing what?” Dean asked, though Sam and he both knew what he was talking about. Sam looked at him and Dean could feel a shift, a sudden change in his brother's understanding.

“Dean.” He looked up. “Dean, you know Castiel's in love with you, right?”

Dean scoffed. “Yeah right.”

“Oh,” Sam said. Then his eyes lit up. “Oh! Oh, Dean!” his voice was the sound of wonderment, incredulous, “you're such an idiot!”

“Why do you sound happy about that?”

Sam shook his head a smile wide on his face like he'd solved the biggest puzzle of the century. “No, no you're actually an idiot. How could you not know that Castiel is completely head over heels crazy in love with you? Answer: you are an idiot.”

“But...but...what?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Dude, I mean I won't even get into all the amount of times Castiel's proven how much he fucking thinks the stars and moon are hung on you. Even then, I thought maybe he just really, really admired you like a...like a kid that has misplaced idol worship or something.”

“Thanks,” Dean replied, rolling his eyes.

“But when we were outside of the hotel?” Sam laughed. “Dean, Castiel was fucking frantic.”

Dean paused. “What?”

“Yeah, he was just sitting and staring at the building and I've never seen him look so still. His hands were clenched so tight that I swear I could hear his bones creaking, you know?”

“But he was the one that sent me in! He was the one who told me to do it!” There was a small part of Dean that clung desperately to Sam's words, needing them, but another larger part that only grew more terrified.

“I'm not saying that Castiel doesn't have his own problems either, man. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't easy for him to let you into a situation like that, where you were gonna have some sex god all over you.”

Dean shrugged. “I mean it wasn't really that bad.”

Sam plunged forward. “But, dude, Castiel fucking loves you and you just told him that you think he is totally incapable of love.”

Dean blinked. “Shit.” Dean blinked again, staring at the doorway. “Shit.”

Dean could feel his heart hammering in his chest and he had no idea what to do. If he believed what Sam was saying, that Castiel loved him all this time even though he sent him off to a sex god and he'd never said anything about loving him or indicated that he'd ever want to kiss Dean or that it was anything beyond business between them, then...then....god, everything was so different, then.

Sam came up behind Dean and softly nudge him. “Go, Dean. Go get him before he goes and does something stupid like fly away.”

Fly away. Castiel was an angel, he had wings, and he was probably going to fly away because Dean was a thoughtless douchebag.

“Shit shit shit!” Dean shouted and tore out of the library.

Castiel had a room not far from where Sam and Dean's were. Castiel didn't really sleep now that his angel mojo was all back, but he'd deserved a space of his own. Dean ran there first.

“Cas?” Dean gasped, rushing into the room and through the open door.

There was no one there. He glanced at the bed, untouched except for a spot where Castiel must have sat down at some point. Dean stared at it a moment but before he was able to turn around and find another place to pursue the angel, he was—quite literally—thrown against the wall.

His head hit the wall and he winced. “Yaaah, geez,” he whimpered. He didn't have long to dwell on the pain as Castiel invaded his space, angry blue eyes filling Dean's vision.

“You're such an ass,” Castiel hissed.

“Yeah,” Dean said, blinking to make his vision stop blurring. “Yeah, I've been told.”

“I have done nothing but try to please and to help you,” Castiel continued, like Dean never spoke. “And you think that I am somehow incapable of love because—because I'm not human like you? Is that it?”

“No, no of course not. Let me explain—.”

“You think because you can go in and swoop up some sex god that I have no feelings?”

Dean stared. “Cas, no—.”

“What do I have to do?” Castiel asked, spit spraying from his lips and landing on Dean's cheeks and Dean's heart constricted at the total betrayal in those eyes.

So similar, so similar to the betrayal that he'd already seen those few weeks ago on silken sheets.

Dean stood silently as Castiel pushed away and ransacked his own closet.

Dean swallowed, voice low. “What are you doing?”

“I'm leaving,” Castiel said, grabbing a box and starting to put the few possessions he had into it. “I can't take it anymore.”

Dean stared as Castiel took a couple of shirts and pushed them messily into the box. He didn't know that Castiel had possessions to begin with, more than his clothes and that cowboy hat that Dean found he missed so incredibly.

Dean stripped himself from the wall and gathered his courage. “Cas.”

Castiel didn't respond, but started shoving his clothes into the box with more force.

“Cas, can you stop? Please?” Castiel shook his head and Dean sighed, groaning as he realized that he was going to have to open up first.

If Sam was being a shit about this and not telling the truth, then Dean was going to murder him and that was it.

He took a steadying breath.

“The sex god found me,” Dean began, trying to ignore how Castiel was still bustling around the room. “There was a room and it was packed with dudes and there was a conga line and like so, so much glitter. And...and so I was talking to this one guy who seemed promising,” and hot, but that wasn't important,” And...and then you were there.”

That gave Castiel pause. Dean saw out of the corner of his eye that the angel slowed down. He had his attention, at least.

“And like, I know now that it wasn't you, obviously,” Dean said. “But, uh, but it seemed a lot like you at the time. Except you were um, you were wearing uh pants.”

“Pants?”

Dean's cheeks betrayed him, and he could feel the fiery blush rise up his neck. “Uh, yeah, like...like leather pants. And, uh, well it turned out that you were actually the Chinese sex dude, not you.”

“I wasn't me?” Castiel frowned. “Wait, why was I there?”

Castiel was smart, sometimes Dean wondered at how vast the angel's knowledge was and he wished that the angel was smart in this case too, but he looked genuinely dumbfounded.

“Cas, the thing you said before I went in. What would the god do once he wanted someone?”

Castiel blinked, then after a moment his eyes widened.

“He would become what was most desirable.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah.” Silence wanted to grip the conversation, but Dean still wanted to steamroll through the story. He looked anywhere but at Cas because Jesus this whole thing was so embarrassing.

“Yeah so...I mean I realized that it wasn't you, and by then he...he'd already said he loved me so, so...” Dean shrugged.

“So you killed him.”

“I killed you, Cas,” Dean said, and his voice felt like gravel. He tried clearing his throat, but it didn’t help. “I mean, you know, it felt like it.”

Dean felt his heart surging to his throat and he tried to swallow it down but tears welled in his eyes anyway. “Yeah, so, I guess I've been weird and stuff. And I mean of course you can love and whatever, I know that. You're—you're a good guy and I'm just...well, I'm an idiot and.”

“Dean.”

“No, I mean it. I'm a real idiot most of the time so I didn't want to confront you about how I obviously felt about you and that I essentially had to stab you and then I was confused because whenever we made out you'd always walk away so fast and I thought you were disgusted and—.”Castiel's hand came up to wrap around Dean's mouth and Dean's gaze snapped to Castiel's.

“Dean. Shut up.”

Dean did. He stared. He watched Castiel as the angel slowly moved his hand away from Dean’s mouth as he tried to figure him out. The crease between his eyebrows became more furrowed and distinct as he slowly, so slowly pressed closer. His hand, the same hand that filled so many of Dean's fantasies in the past few weeks (and years, let's be honest), slowly cupped Dean's face.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked.

Castiel leaned closer and already he could feel the tinglings of warmth leaching into his cheeks and his skin everywhere the angel was touching him but Dean didn't dare to move.

He barely breathed until Castiel said, voice like gravel, “I am going to kiss you.” Castiel leaned closer.

“Oh,” Dean replied, his voice little more than a whisper. “Okay.”

Castiel still didn't kiss him, hovering as his eyes drifted to Dean's lips. Dean darted his tongue out, whetting them as chapped and still slightly raw as they were.

“Dean?” Castiel whispered.

“Yeah?”

Dean felt the soft grin on the angel's face as he nearly closed the gap.

“Please, don't resist.”

Dean huffed a laugh, soundless above the pitter-patter of his heartbeat.

“You got it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is technically the end of the story. The next chapter will be what immediately follows the last scene of this chapter, because I promised Sabbit some smut and—by the mighty trident of Poseidon!—will I give her some hanky-panky! Again, I would like to thank Deeleybopper for her editing prowess, Sabbit for the prompt and for being amazing, and to you for joining me and my ghost cowboy troupe.


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This takes place immediately after the last line of Chapter 3. Spoilers? Sex. That's it. That's literally all that happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the official end of "Resist Me." It's also the first time I've written anything that's NSFW, so all creative and constructive criticism is welcomed. Other than that, thank you for tagging along on this story. Thanks to Deeleybopper for being just the raddest human/beta on the planet and to Sabbit, again, for letting me write her prompt (and put silly things in it).

“Please don't resist.”

Dean huffed a laugh, soundless above the pitter-patter of his heartbeat.

“You got it.”

Yet neither of them moved. This wasn’t necessarily new ground, Dean’s muscles responded to the memory of Castiel’s hips rolling on top of his own, the flames that engulfed his skin with every touch. And now, a month later in the soft light of Castiel’s room, Dean could feel the angel’s breath on his lips.

“What are you waiting for?” His voice was barely above a whisper, so weighted with anticipation and desire that his vocal chords seemed to have evaporated.

Castiel, whose laugh tumbled from him like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, licked his own lips and Dean shivered at the sight of the angel’s wet, pink tongue. “I just didn’t think that this could happen,” he murmured. “I’m having trouble believing that this is real.”

Dean’s hand that had been hanging uselessly at his side stroked up Castiel’s chest to reach for his tie. The blue tie rested in his palm and a Dean stroked the tie with a trembling thumb. He felt more than heard the Castiel’s breath catch in his throat, and watched his adam’s apple bob under golden skin. Encouraged, Dean clutched the tie and twisted, pulling Castiel the extra inch or so to press their lips together.

They stayed there a moment. Warm, pliant lips pressed and fitted together, unmoving. Slowly, (god, he didn’t know time could move so slowly) Dean opened his mouth and tenderly sucked Castiel's lower lip into his mouth, teeth biting down on the plump flesh. He let the lip go after a moment, and his tongue glided naturally into the angel's mouth. His efforts were met with a tentative tongue and Dean pressed further, encouraged by the taste of coffee on Castiel’s breath as their tongues tangled together.

The bunker was such a still place, quiet. The whole thing echoed with unheard footsteps, so vast yet so empty. That quiet settled into Dean’s bones as Castiel’s lips parted from his own, only for a brief instant, before plunging with a breathtaking eagerness, clutching Dean's face between large, square hands that unleashed a maelstrom of delightful sensations up Dean's spine.

Dean hooked the door with the heel of his boot and slammed it shut. The violent noise must have sparked something in Castiel whose tentative touches melted away completely to a guttural moan. Dean could feel the noise pulse from Castiel's lips as the angel grabbed him tighter, his fingers greedily gripping at Dean's shirt and pulling him even closer.

Castiel’s mouth began roaming to other parts of Dean’s face: searing his cheek, his jaw, and latching onto the shell of his ear. He teased the soft, quickly heating skin with his teeth and Dean’s visibly shuddered in Castiel’s arms. “Cas,” he groaned, voice soft and desperate.

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel murmured, his asphalt voice causing Dean’s whole lower half to twitch in anticipation. “Show me.”

“Show you what?”

“How much you want this.” Castiel licked Dean’s ear, breath hot and heavy, “How much you want me.”

It was so simple. It was so fucking simple, actually, that Dean nearly gnashed his teeth, as something hard and frantic tugged at his heartbeat, arousal grappling with his throat for air. He shoved Castiel into the wall and he felt the angel stutter with surprise at the sudden force.

And like that the tension almost immediately drained from Dean. “Oh, I’m sorry—.”

Castiel grabbed his chin and with a deep, needy sound that shot tantalizing tendrils of want straight to Dean’s cock, brought their faces back together in a bruising caress of lips.

“Don't you dare stop,” Castiel growled into the kiss. Teeth pulled at Dean’s lips with abandon, and Castiel’s tongue plunged deep into Dean's mouth. Castiel gave a desperate keen that made Dean’s whole body rigid. He rammed Castiel further into the wall, meeting every single one of Castiel's savage kisses with lips and teeth. Cas gave back double if not more, fingertips entangling and gripping Dean’s short strands of hair.

Dean rolled his hips experimentally against Castiel’s and felt the angel momentarily still. Then, Castiel grabbed his ass with both of his hands, fingers digging into muscle and making Dean groan and roll his hips again. Dean clutched Castiel’s biceps, squeezing as they grinded into each other, each thrust only enhancing their buzzing need to get closer.

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel rasped, praising. Dean’s hand which was still at Castiel’s tie made short work of unknotting it. The tie fell to the floor as he brought both hands up to the buttons of Castiel's shirt. “So long, Dean. I've wanted you for so long.”

“How long?” Dean asked, shakily undoing each button on Castiel's shirt, his hands greedy to touch more of the honey-gold skin underneath. Castiel didn't respond immediately so Dean leaned in and laved at Castiel's throat with his tongue and a careful bite at his jugular. “Tell me,” he breathed into the angel's skin.

“I can't remember,” Castiel admitted, shuddering as Dean coaxed his knee up to grind into Castiel's groin, the sound ripping through Dean's brain. “Mm, please Dean. Please. I need—.”

Dean resumed unbuttoning the angel's shirt, though he didn't stop kneading the angel's salty, sweat glistened neck with his lips and teeth. Castiel had degenerated into small panting breaths as Dean undid the last button and pulled the shirt off of his shoulders. He couldn't help but pause and step back a moment to admire the muscles that were long hidden underneath, hot and slick with sweat and desire.

“So hot, Cas,” Dean murmured, sidling back to press his hips against the angel's once more. “It's unfair how much I fucking want you.” Castiel could only groan as Dean set to work claiming every possible inch of skin on his torso, his flat tongue lapping up the golden skin of the angel's thick, firm chest and stomach.

“What do you want, Dean?” Castiel's voice, so gravelly and rough, sounded like a fucking hurricane and Dean's already half erect cock twitched

“Keep talking, Cas,” he begged, mouth sucking and teeth sinking into Castiel's shoulder with abandon. “Tell me what you want.”

Castiel made a thoughtful noise and, after a beat, guided the two of them away from the wall. 

With a gentle shove, Dean was on the bed. Dean scooted up to lay fully on the mattress as Castiel, topless and pants tented with obvious desire, stood at the edge of the bed. Dean didn't know what the angel was waiting for, his head quirked to the side in the fucking endearing (and currently, incredibly fucking hot) way that he'd done since the moment Dean had met him.

“What is it?” Dean's voice was little more than a whisper.

Castiel,  the blue of his eyes no more than a smoke ring around his pupil, gave Dean the most sinful and incredible smirk that sank desire right into Dean's toes.

“Take off your shirt.” Dean blinked. He reached down for his shirt, slowly. “I did not say take your time, Dean.” 

Dean glanced up and suddenly Castiel, the man who had grown over time to become a slightly lackadaisical, soft version of himself was no longer standing at the end of the bed.

It was Castiel, Servant of the Lord and Soldier of the Heavens who stood before him, stance erect and eyes still black with arousal but inspecting. Dean gulped. 

Quickly, he took off his shirt and threw it aside. “Very good, Dean,” Castiel said, but didn't move any closer. His eyes danced around Dean's arms, back to his face and down to his stomach and Dean could feel the gaze like a caress and he groaned helplessly.

“Now your pants, Dean,” Castiel said. Dean reached for them. “But take your time. And don't you dare touch yourself. That is not allowed. Not yet.”

Shit. There was no way he wasn’t getting out of this completely wrecked, Dean thought, as his nerves seemed to electrify at the commanding tone of Castiel’s voice. 

“O-okay,” Dean whispered, reaching for his pants and unbuttoning them with a hiss. His cock was so hard it was practically impossible to avoid touching it as he slowly undid his zipper. Once done, he was able to stand up from the bed and let his pants fall away with minimal assistance. He stood in front of Castiel in nothing but his briefs, his arousal incredibly evident by the massive bulge in them.

“Cas, please,” Dean pleaded to the angel who was looking Dean over with heated approval.

“Lay on the bed, Dean,” Castiel said, voice still full of heady command that made Dean want to crumble to his knees but also laced with a softness, a tenderness that made Dean immediately do what the angel asked. He lay back on the bed, and he felt a little self conscious being so vulnerable and on display, his vision a little fuzzy.

He was glad that he listened to the angel, not that it seemed like he'd had much of a choice between his aching cock and Castiel's voice. Castiel starting taking off his own pants, his eyes never leaving Dean as he slid the khakis off, his cock mostly freed barring his boxers and bobbing slightly as the pants were kicked away.

Slowly, Castiel brought his hands down to the bed and, like a leopard stalking its prey, began crawling languidly towards Dean. 

The bed was not that big, yet Castiel was taking his time to reach Dean. His limbs, long and graceful, loped with feline precision until finally one large, warm hand reached Dean's bare leg and stroked the golden hairs making the hairs rise all over Dean's body.

“Cas, man, please I—I need you to—“

“Shh,” Castiel murmured. “Patience.”

Dean bit his lip as Castiel travelled further, from Dean's calf up to his knee. Fingertips trailed slowly up his thigh, evoking a whine out of Dean and a small, dark chuckle out of the angel.

“So eager,” Castiel whispered. The fingertips of his hand finally, thankfully brushed past Dean's penis which was so desperately erect that he could cry at the small attention paid to it. 

Castiel's eyes roved Dean's body finally meeting his gaze as the angel palmed Dean through his briefs. “A-ah,” Dean whimpered, his eyes fluttering shut as the featherlight touches became greedy, kneading at Dean's cock with one blissfully steady, strong hand.

“My father performed his greatest masterpiece when he made you, Dean,” Castiel murmured and Dean gasped as he changed something about his grip, twisting and pulling at the bulge through the fabric which was quickly dampening with precome.

“Best,” Dean huffed, a little dizzy, “best not talk about your dad when your hand's on my junk, Cas.”

Castiel laughed, breathily, and nodded. “Agreed.” He bent forward and licked a trail up Dean's neck and took his earlobe with eager teeth. Each time the tongue stroked Dean's ear, he felt a burst of want tingling straight to his cock and he moaned.

“Now,” Castiel whispered in Dean's ear, taking his hand away from Dean's cock and straddling over his hips, “Take the rest of it off.”

Dean tried to register the request. “Kind of hard with you hoverin’ over me.” Not that he was complaining, like, at all.

That smirk, so fucking wicked, was back and Dean could feel it against his ear and god he wanted that smirk to engulf him. “Try.”

Well, no one could say that Dean was a quitter, that was for certain.

Dean licked his lips and slid his hands down his stomach to his hips. Castiel stopped nibbling at his ear and sat back a little to take a moment and, Dean realized, to watch him take off the briefs. “My turn,” Dean thought with his own smirk twisting his lips as he kept his gaze securely on Castiel's face, gauging his reaction. Castiel remained attentive to Dean's hands with the most fervid fascination.

Dean stroked his thumb over the waistband of his briefs, not yet moving to take off the black material. He brushed across his own muscular stomach and watched Castiel wet his lips, that sensuous pink tongue darting from his mouth. 

Soon, with arousal spicy and strong on his tongue, Dean gave up the teasing and slipped his fingers under the waistband. With both hands, he slowly slid them off his hips. 

Dean lifted himself off the bed a little and found himself pressed against Castiel with his underwear at his calves, because Castiel had grasped Dean's backside and pressed him to his front.

Dean shivered. “I thought you said we needed to be patient,” he rasped. Castiel’s hand stayed securely fastened to Dean’s ass and Dean nearly lost it when he felt strong fingers kneading the sensitive muscle. “Cas.” 

Castiel growled but, after a few moments, let Dean go and he was able to shake the last of his briefs off his legs and flung them off the bed. 

“Your turn,” Dean said, settling back underneath Castiel, fully naked.

Castiel seemed a little lost, and Dean would have been happy to help dispel the look if it wasn't so perfect on that angelic face. In a moment, however, Castiel looked again like a warrior, in charge. “No.” Castiel took Dean's hand and pressed it against his own stomach. “You.”

Dean swallowed. Tentatively, nervously, he nodded and went about taking off Castiel's boxers. He brushed fingers against Castiel’s stomach and felt the millions of tiny hairs contract and twitch under his touch. 

Pulling at the waistband of Castiel’s boxers to Castiel’s calves, the angel kicked the boxer’s aside then resettled himself back over Dean. Dean looked at Castiel's cock which bobbed, flush with arousal. It was stocky and the skin was soft as velvet as it pressed down against Dean's stomach and Castiel leaned down to kiss his lips again.

With very little other words, Castiel rolled his hips down into Dean's and both men audibly groaned at the sensation, cocks rubbing together. Dean could feel Castiel's precome wipe unto his own cock, his stomach. It was fairly clear neither of them were going to last much longer.

They were thrusting in rhythm, now, their bodies in sync as their desire escalated. “Cas,” Dean groaned, “Cas I'm not gonna last if we keep doing this.”

“Isn't that the point?” Castiel huffed into his ear, hips grinding into Dean's with increasing ferocity.

Dean felt his cheeks flush, further than they had before, as he said, “Cas, I need you to fuck me right now.”

Castiel stilled. He lifted his head and met Dean's eyes. Before Castiel could ask Dean said, “I need you, Cas. Please.”

As if the words and something in his gaze were finally enough confirmation, Castiel shortly nodded and moved up on the bed going into his bedside table drawer. Dean raised an eyebrow when he saw the bottle of lubricant and condom in Castiel's hands.

“I wasn't very hopeful,” Castiel admitted, opening the lube and squirting the liquid into his hands, rubbing it together to warm it up, “but I couldn’t help but have a little faith.”

Dean grinned. “Ever the angel.”

Castiel rolled his eyes. “Turn over, Dean.”

Dean did as the angel requested and could not help the sound, needy and euphoric, that came out of his mouth when Castiel inserted his first finger.

“Hm, tight.” It sounded like an observation, as much as someone would remark on the weather, but Dean could also feel the warmth of Castiel's fingers as it shifted inside him and the heat pouring off the angel as, with another breath, Castiel put his second finger in and pressed up.

“A-ah!” Dean panted as Castiel hit his prostate with a surprising amount of accuracy. His hips stuttered and he would have felt embarrassed at rutting like a teenager against a mattress if it weren't for the pliant, hot lips that pressed against his back.

Castiel kissed Dean's shoulder, back, just above his tail bone, and with every touch of Dean's prostate, he pressed further warm kisses up and down his spine. By the time Castiel stuck a third finger in, Dean was practically jello.

“Cas,” Dean rasped, “I'm good, dude. Please, please just—.”

“Right,” Castiel said, and for once he sounded a little thrown, a little—Dean realized—nervous. Dean reached behind him and grabbed Castiel's free hand.

“Come on, babe,” Dean said, turning his head to look at Castiel who looked fucking wrecked. “Fuck me.”

Castiel took his fingers slowly out of Dean and ripped the foil of his condom, wrapping it around his penis with a less practiced, but still ultimately successful, air. He rubbed additional lubricant on his cock and worked it to the point that he seemed to be moaning in pleasure before lining himself up with Dean.

“Wait,” Dean said and Castiel stopped, the look in his eye like he was both stunned into stopping and ready to rip out the throat of whatever was going to stop him from fucking Dean to heaven and back. Dean grinned and turned around, facing the angel fully. “I want to watch you, see your face.”

Castiel blinked. Then, with a slow nod, he canted Dean's hips up and again lined himself up against his entrance. Slowly he sank down into Dean and both of them groaned in complete unison.

And the world was nothing but blue and static. Castiel set a temperate pace as Dean nodded, then keened in pleasure. 

It soon escalated as with each thrust Dean moaned and grabbed at Castiel's arms, nails scratching down his shoulders. Castiel grunted, each breath a huff. With a shift, suddenly Castiel was hitting Dean's prostate with his cock and it was only a few short moments later that had Dean climaxing with nothing more than a “Shit! Shit I’m—!”

Castiel soon followed, bending over to bite his moan into Dean's shoulder as he orgasmed.

They pulsed against each other, a crescendoing mass of lust and writhing limbs until they, eventually, were able to come down from their high. 

As the air cooled and their breaths began to even out, Castiel's hips inched their way to a stop. He didn't pull out, only panted into Dean's shoulder. Dean's hands were latched into Castiel's hair and he began to pry his fingers away, letting one hand fall to settle on Castiel's hip.

They just breathed. Dean's heartbeat felt faster than a locomotive and like it would soon rise right out of his throat. He tried to form words but nothing seemed worth saying, worth breaking this moment of sweat and heat and Castiel. He stroked the angel’s hair as their heartbeats tried to find a rhythm, again. Castiel's breath stuttered, a laugh.

“Wow,” he murmured. Dean laughed, too, softly.

“You can say that, again,” he replied. Castiel's hair was soaked with sweat but still soft underneath Dean's fingertips. 

Dean tried taking a deep breath to even the manic pulse of his heart, but Castiel lifted his own hand to grasp Dean's fingers, lacing them together. He brought Dean's hand to his lips, and a kiss so tender and soft pressed against his skin that Dean could feel something, something not quite arousal yet far, far more terrifying, grip his heart.

Castiel eventually pulled out of Dean so that he could lay more comfortably beside Dean on his mattress, even though Dean couldn’t help the aching sigh that Castiel’s cock left in its wake. They lay quietly, hands still laced together by their fingers.

“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel whispered, thumb stroking the inside of Dean's palm.

Dean snorted, a weak sound. “You don't need to thank me, nerd.”

Castiel hummed. “We...we should do that again.”

Dean wanted to laugh, and could feel it bubbling in his chest but decided to instead curl closer to the angel, savouring the slightly sore feeling in his ass as he adjusted.

“Maybe,” Castiel continued, opening his arms and letting Dean in closer, “Maybe you could...” He trailed off and, considering how bold and commanding the angel had been before, Dean was surprised to find the angel was blushing.

“Fuck you,” Dean said, finally allowing himself a small laugh. “The words that you're looking for is 'fuck you.'”

Castiel hummed. “Yes, that.”

They lay there, quiet, letting the heavy silence of the bunker and the warmth of their bodies take over the room underneath the soft orange light of Castiel's bedside lamp.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Dean started and was stopped, briefly, by the hazy blue eyes that looked back at him. 

He tried to think of a way to finish that sentence. Tell him how much he’d missed Castiel while he was off and Dean didn’t know where he was? How much he prayed to him hoping that the angel would hear him? How much he wanted that freshly wrecked, flushed face pressed against his? How much he wanted those lips against his own? 

How much he loved this fucking guy to death?

“What, Dean?”

Dean exhaled, a smile on his lips. “I am pretty damn sexy in a cowboy hat.”

The look Castiel shot Dean was positively, absolutely filthy.


End file.
